Mike from Iowa - How Are You Doing With All That Water?

The title is pretty much the post.  Mike's been a frequent commenter here.  He's warned me about the danger of bears, but his state's been pounded with tornadoes and now flooding from rising rivers.  Hope you're doing ok.  

Why Biden Is Still By Far The Best Candidate For President [Updated]

 He looked and sounded older than he did four years ago.  

So what?  

He's a decent man.  He's had a good life with some terrible tragedies, so he understands and empathizes with others.

He's been in the Senate for 36 years and was Vice President for eight years.  He's made solid relationships with many, many important players in our government, among business leaders, labor leaders, and leaders of other nations. He knows how Washington works.  He knows how the world works.  And as President with a slim majority in the Senate, and for two years in the House, then a minority for two years, he's still accomplished an enormous amount, starting with the Infrastructure bill that is transforming the backbone of the US - the roads, the bridges, ports, airports and much more.  

His opponents are a felon facing lots more charges.  A misogynist, racist, adulterer, narcissist, would be dictator, who lauds our worst enemies and can't say two sentences without lying three or four times.  [UPDATE 6/29/24:  Some of you may have noted that this paragraph began "His opponents" plural, but I only wrote about one.  I meant to add that he was also fighting against the millionaires and billionaires who managed to stack the Supreme Court, and also the media who are asking Biden to drop out of the race, but aren't asking Trump to do that.  Below I've added a video that Anonymous linked to in the comments which shows a debate moderator who takes no prisoners when candidates don't answer his questions.]

It's an easy choice.

Is Biden old?  

He's certainly among the oldest US citizens.  Old age, if you have your marbles in tact, and he does, means you have the wisdom that accrues to those who have lived a long life with a curious mind.  

His opponent is almost as old, but his mind is diseased with narcissism and a massive inferiority complex that he masks with outrageous false boasts about his greatness.  The only skills he gained through life involved blaming others, avoiding legal consequences,  and generally being a despicable person.  

I'm not worried about Biden's age, 

because he cares about the US, all its citizens and non-citizens, and al the people around the world, rich and poor alike. 

And because he's not president in order to gain power and wealth.

And because he's got a vice president who would make a spectacular president.  

And because he knows that, and if he gets to the point where he can't perform his duties, he'll gracefully set down and let Kamala Harris take over.  

In the meantime, he's captain of a ship that is sailing well, despite the stormy seas the climate denying Republicans have roiled up.

You want to get a glimpse of what things would be like under a second Trump presidency?  

Read the Project 2025 - the blueprint for the next Trump presidency that dismantles the US democracy

Watch Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial - on Netflix

[UPDATED 6/29/2024:  And here's the video Anonymous (first comment below) linked to.  This makes it easier to see and is a great lesson for the rest of the media when interviewing candidates.  Thanks, Anon.

Can someone tell me why Kyle Clark is not the moderator in the President Biden and Trump debate?? #trumpisunfitforoffice #Debate2024 pic.twitter.com/mNCxHcnb4D

— Sunsun Girly (@sunsungirly) June 25, 2024

Jury Duty Week

 I was assigned the number 150.  

Last Friday after I 5pm and the called up numbers 1-75

Monday evening no additional jurors were needed.

Tuesday evening no additional jurors were needed.

Wednesday evening no additional jurors were needed.

Thursday evening no additional jurors were needed.

So Alaska State court in Anchorage this week only needed 75 jurors.  I remember in the past when a couple of hundred people (or so it seemed) gathered in the large jury room awaiting someone calling them to serve.  

Either there are a to fewer cases now, or at least this week, or they got smarter and just called the number they thought they'd need for Monday and let the rest of us stay home.  And that first 75 was all they needed.  That saves money for the court system (for one, they pay parking for jurors who bring their parking tickets from one particular lot.)  And with way fewer people to track at court, they can use the court personnel for other purposes.  

Being on a jury is an interesting experience and defendants deserve thoughtful attentive jurors.  But if I wasn't going to be in a courtroom, it's better to be told the night before not to come in at all.  

Two Related Short Videos -

The first has excerpts of James Baldwin speaking at Cambridge University in 1965 about growing up in a country that has no place for him.  

The second is about an essay called the Theory of Stupidity [Theorie der Dummheit] written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer from a German prison 20 years earlier.  

They both seem closely related.  They're both short and I strongly recommend you take the time.  And then think about what they mean to you and what, if anything, you might do in response to their words.  

Baldwin is articulate, logical, and the truths he speaks are damning.

Bonhöffer's essay comes from his experiences as Hitler gained power in Germany.  I don't like the word 'stupidity' because in English it tends to have the meaning of not smart, incapable of clear thinking.  We say it about trivial mistakes a lot.  

Bonhöffer's word in German was Dummheit.  which he defined as a moral failing rather than a lack of intelligence.  

I'd note he wrote this in prison, so I'm not sure what access he had to others' thoughts - certainly no library or google - but possibly he had access to other thinkers in prison.  

As I look at Trump's cult, I think the word ignorant is better than stupid.  I'd define ignorant as unaware of key facts and ways of thinking.  Some have been brainwashed by people who claim to be Christians, but clearly are not following the spirit of Christ.  

But overall, I suspect most cult members recognize the lies of their leader, but value the power of their white skin over everything else and see Trump for the fellow racist he is.  And that's why they support him.  And others who might not be such racists fear being ostracized from their Trumpist families, churches, and friends if they openly disagree.  But they can disagree in the voting booth with nobody knowing.  

[Steve, how do you explain the Blacks who are for him?  They get a special reception from powerful white men for stepping up and being 'proof' that the movement isn't racist. This is a recognition they don't get from other Blacks and probably for good reason.  And then there's Stephen Miller, Trump's super anti-immigrant advisor who is the grandson of Jews who fled Russian pogroms and Hitler.]

Focus on Baldwin and Bonhöffer.  Here's Bonhöffer's complete essay.

Klezmer At The Writer's Block

 There was a mention in the Anchorage Daily News that there would be a klezmer concert in Anchorage.  That doesn't happen often.  The last real klezmer concert we went to was in San Francisco in 2012.  To learn more about klezmer music, go to that link.  

The bookstore is pretty small.  I estimate there were about 30 folks in the small room where the concert was centered and a few more in the main room.  So this was cozy.  

What we got in Anchorage was two of the members of the San Francisco Yiddish Combo - husband and wife, Jason Eckle and Rebecca Roudman.  [I'm sure about Rebecca.  Jason's name comes from The Dirty Cello website.]

The combination of klezmer music (and klezmer adjacent music) and the cheeky but informative banter between songs made this a fast moving and rousing hour or so of music.  

I made the video on my phone and I'm experimenting just uploading it directly to Youtube.  Usually I've used Movies on my Mac.  What I saw of the video quality was pretty awful and I may redo it. [The video on the blog actually looks ok, so I'll leave it.]  The music is the key, but also the infectious smile and enthusiasm  of cellist  Rebecca Roudman were also important.  It's a short clip, just to give you a sense of the energy.

You can see more video on the Combo's website.

The guitarist, Jason, did most of the explanations between pieces.  But Rebecca was clearly the master musician.  Her fingers flew effortless from note to note.  She's truly a gifted and passionate cellist.  

So here's a little more about her from Oakland Symphony website.

"Rebecca Roudman

Cello

Equally at home as a renowned classical cello player or on the cutting edge of pop music, Rebecca Roudman is one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s most exciting crossover cellists.

As a member of both the Oakland East-Bay Symphony and the Santa Rosa Symphony, Rebecca is an experienced orchestral musician who has toured with orchestras to Brazil and throughout Europe. While developing her classical skills, Rebecca studied with both Larry Granger of the San Francisco Symphony and Gretchen Elliot, one of Janos Starker’s students. Rebecca has premiered numerous classical and contemporary works, many of 

which were written for her."

Because she played so effortlessly, the cello seemed to be an extension of her fingers.  I asked her afterward whether she took to the cello from the beginning.  She shook her head with an emphatic no.  I think she said she started at six and struggled.  It was ten years before she felt completely comfortable with the instrument.  

That's it.  Short and sweet.   

Biking Stories This Week - Moose, Innocence, Post Cards, Bike Lanes, Big Leaves

 The moose are out this week.  Tuesday, walking toward Goose Lake we ran into a cow and calf.  Two bikers and a runner had already alerted us, as they were looking for alternate routes.  We got close enough to see them through the trees and walked back.  

Thursday, biking to up Campbell Airstrip Road, I passed a young bull with a nice growing rack.  It was the part of the trail that separates from the road.  Where I'd been warned by a driver a couple of years ago that they'd seen a bear on the trail.  So when I get to this part, I ring my bell a bunch to no one is surprised I'm there.  And down below the trail was the moose.  On the way back, I looked for him down below and there was nothing there.  Then there he was right next to the trail.  Turned back and took the road down.  Where I was able to get this picture.   You can see he's almost on the bike trail.

Then I stopped in the Botanical Garden.  They have a great plant sale.  Well, they sell plants all summer.  There's a good selection of interesting plants - local and not - that do well in Anchorage.  The plant sale is right at the front so I think you can buy plants without paying admission.  But the whole garden is worth some exploration.  And things change in there every week as different flowers start to show.

Here's some Shieldleaf Rogersia at the Garden.   These are very large leaves - the sign says China, Korea.  

They grow in the shade and my yard has lots of shade so I bought one about three years ago.  Bugs have been eating at it each year before it gets real big.  But this year it's looking better.  

Friday I had a couple of stops to make downtown.  First I dropped in at the Alaska Innocence Project.  They help prisoners who claim they were wrongly convicted and have evidence to back their cases.  They helped get the Fairbanks Four freed several years ago.  

I took an Óle course  several years ago, taught by Bill Oberly the (now retired) director and was highly impressed with their work.  

Prisoners don't get a lot of sympathy from the public, and innocent people behind bars is one of the biggest injustices in our society.  Since

Since it was a beautiful day we met in their conference room on the roof.

That's Francisco on the left and Jory on the right.  Here's a short video - under 2 minutes - that I recommend.  It talks about why people are wrongly convicted and how many there are.  

On the way to their office I found the new protected downtown bike lane.  I'd read about it in the Anchorage Daily News, but forgot about it until I came across it.  What an improvement.  No dodging pedestrians on the sidewalk or cars in the street. I could relax and just ride.  But there's not much of it - less than 1/2 mile I'd guess.  And then to get to the office I had to go back to the streets.  It even has its own street light with red and green bikes.  

Next stop was at Tim's to pick up some postcards to mail to voters.  This is probably the least painful way for introverts to be actively working to save Democracy.  [If you think I'm being alarmist, let's talk.  The mainstream media are treating the election as if Trump were a normal candidate.  He's not. Mainstream media only look reasonable in comparison with Fox.  With the Far Right capture of the Supreme Court, a Trump presidency would be the end of democracy in the US.] In this case the Environmental Voters Project combined with the Citizens Climate Lobby.  Tim's in a log cabin downtown, but this one has been modernized a bit.  It even has a touchpad to unlock the door.  

I have some work to do.  

Today was a spectacular day.  I picked up a book that was on hold at the library for me.  I think I requested it six or more months ago - The Sympathizer by Viet Thang Nguyen.  It won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the first 15 pages pulled me right in.                                           I'm still working on Many Things Under a Rock - a book about octopuses.                                                           From the library to the post office to get post card stamps and to mail a letter to my grandson who is away at camp.  The post office was closed, but I could mail the letter.                                                        Finally I could bike on.  As I said, it was a beautiful day - our warmest of the year I'm sure.

                                                                                      I doubt  the official temperature,
which is measured at the airport, was 77˚F (26˚C), but it was a nice, nice day.  

I went up Arctic to the Campbell Creek bike trail near Dimond and then back down the  trail past Taku Lake and eventually home.  I've gone, as of today, 475 kilometers, this summer.  (That means since the trails were clear enough of snow to ride.)

We had salmon on the deck this evening - with loud rumbles of thunder in the background.  That's not something we get often in Anchorage - sometimes none in a year or three.  

So keeping it fairly light today.  Happy Fathers' Day to all of you lucky enough to have this awesome responsibility. 

A Good Day At The Renaissance Faire

We went to the Three Barons Renaissance Faire Sunday at Russian Jack.  For us Russian Jack is the southern section with the Chalet, golf, and the greenhouse.  But there were only a couple of golfers there.  

Things were happening behind a playground  at Pine an 8th.  It was a cloudy/sunny day with the possibility of sun, rain, both, but it turned out just perfect for going to the Faire.  Lots of people were in costumes.  

I sent this picture to a much younger friend who tends to know lots of anime characters. 

He immediately texted back:  Lucifer, Hazbin Hotel.

So I looked Lucifer up and got this picture.  (Apparently his wings aren't always visible.)

From Aminoapps

So I sent him so more pictures to see if he could ID them too.  

The sorcerer's hat from Fantasia.  Well he said Mickey's hat, but this one is my generation and I knew that Mickey used the sorcerer's hat when the sorcerer was away to make his chores easier.  It didn't work out the way he intended.    

From Reactormag

This one he couldn't identify. They're own selves maybe.

He wasn't sure.  Hazarded it might be the Valkyrie Gunnr

Maybe she's another Valkyrie.

From Creator

And Gandalf.

From USAToday

Lots and lots of people.  Some long lines at the food booths especially.  We got to see Fractured Fairy Tales - a production of Hansel and Gretel with a narrator  (to the right), 

The woodcutter and his wife (she also played the wicked step mother in the same outfit) and Hansel and Gretel.

And a bunch of other characters, some, like the Big Bad Wolf, from other fairy tales - had to be shooed off the stage by the narrator for being in the wrong play.   It wasn't high drama, but it was cute and we enjoyed it a lot.  Sitting out in the warm sunshine didn't hurt.  (For people in parts of the country where the temperatures are above the 90s, warm sunshine here means high 60s, maybe low 70s.)

This, as I understood it, was a slippery fish, who kept interrupting the play and had to be chased off the stage.  

And this (woman on the left) was the witch, who insisted she was being maligned.  Not a witch, a widow.  And the children were destroying and eating her house that she spent so long to bake and build.  

As I said, a lot of people dressed special (very special) for the occasion.  

We bought a turkey leg.  More like an ostrich leg, it was so big (and delicious.)  

We sat out on the grass and watched jousters take each other on with big foam clubs.  

And the turkey made me sleepy so I lay back an watched the clouds roll by.  

A good day.  

AI Scraping My Blog?

My Stat-Counter account has been showing this frequent Hong Kong visitor:

Total Sessions usually records how many times the computer has visited, but it says only 1, even though there are five total hits on this one page (of 20 hits) on the Stat Counter report.  It's been showing up frequently for weeks now.

I know, I said five, but they are scattered.  The one on top is one.  Here are three more and there was one more.  

I've had this sort of thing before, but it's been awhile.  In the past, the assumption was they were scraping content.  Now, I'm wondering if it isn't an AI bot gathering stuff for training.  If so, what should I do and how?  From Duda.

"How to Block AI Crawlers from Crawling your Site

Some site owners are choosing to block AI crawlers, such as ChatGPT and Bard from crawling their site in order to prevent it from learning from or using their website content. You can block these AI user-agents in a similar manner as you would block Google crawlers; by replacing the default robots.txt file with a new file that specifies disallow rules for specific AI user-agents."

When I first started blogging, I spent a lot of time learning about (and blogging about) technical aspects of blogging - how to:find out if anyone is reading the blog; to embed photos and videos; how to change the format; how to add an email address; etc.  

Now AI is raising other issues.  Such as how to block AI crawlers from using your site to train its bots.  

This is not what I want to spend my time on.  First the internet is telling me I have to block each crawler separately by adding code to the robot.txt file.  

Should You Block AI Tools From Accessing Your Website?

Unfortunately, there’s no simple way to block all AI bots from accessing your website, and manually blocking each individual bot is almost impossible. Even if you keep up with the latest AI bots roaming the web, there’s no guarantee they’ll all adhere to the commands in your robots.txt file. 

 From Google Search Central:

"You can control which files crawlers may access on your site with a robots.txt file.

A robots.txt file lives at the root of your site. So, for site www.example.com, the robots.txt file lives at www.example.com/robots.txt. robots.txt is a plain text file that follows the Robots Exclusion Standard. A robots.txt file consists of one or more rules. Each rule blocks or allows access for all or a specific crawler to a specified file path on the domain or subdomain where the robots.txt file is hosted. Unless you specify otherwise in your robots.txt file, all files are implicitly allowed for crawling."

That means I have to find the robots.text file and add stuff and hope I do it just right so I don't screw something else up.  But this site also warns:

"If you use a site hosting service, such as Wix or Blogger [That's me], you might not need to (or be able to) edit your robots.txt file directly. Instead, your provider might expose a search settings page or some other mechanism to tell search engines whether or not to crawl your page."

Of course I don't want to block search engines for browsers or only subscribers will ever see my posts.  

So I'm asking myself, is this worth the time it's going to take to figure this out.  Well, someone else asked that too.

"The real question here is whether the results are worth the effort, and the short answer is (almost certainly) no."

Here's another one saying the same thing:

"At the end of the day blocking ChatGPT and other generative AI crawlers is really a matter of choice. Depending on your website’s purpose and/or your business model it may make sense to. But in my opinion the vast majority of sites have nothing to fear from allowing AI crawlers to crawl their site."

For now, I want to agree with this advice.  But then I start thinking that this was written by an AI firm that wants to steal your content.   

And I don't even know if that Hong Kong visitor is scraping material for some AI enterprise.  Maybe it's just stealing content.  

Like your car, your house, your garden, your teeth, everything needs some maintenance to keep it functioning.  Clearly my phone and computer do, and this blog does as well, though I've avoided that for some time on the blog.  

I'm now officially putting myself on notice to pay more attention to AI.  

Numbers Bite Reporter

In a story about dogs biting mail carriers on June 7, the Anchorage Daily News  reported that Los Angeles had the most dog bites and more than implied that Anchorage, in comparison, really didn't have a dog biting problem.

"It also released a national ranking of cities where the most mailmen have been bitten by dogs. On top: Los Angeles, with 65 dog bites recorded in 2023.

Anchorage isn’t anywhere near that number. Each year, six or so postal carriers are on the receiving end of dog attacks here, said safety manager Peter Neagle, a 40-year veteran of the service."

 Whoa!!!!   Let's look at that a bit more carefully.  

[Mixed Media Dragon, Madison Griffin,
 Anchorage Museum,
South High School Anchorage]

LA, with 13,000,000 people had 65 dog bites.

Anchorage with 380,000 people had 6 dog bites.  

LA has 34 times more people than Anchorage.   (13 million/380k = 34.2)

So, if Anchorage had LA's population, Anchorage would have had 205 (34.2 X 6) dog bites.

The numbers we want, if we're going to accurately compare LA to Anchorage, are the number of dog bites per capita.  

Anchorage has .000016 dog bites of mail carriers per capita.  (6/380,000 =.000016)

Los Angeles has .000005 dog bites of mail carriers per capita. (13,000,000/65=.000005)

In either case, it's a relatively small number.  If we look at number of dog bites per 100,000 population we get:

Anchorage: 1.58 dog bites per 100,000 people

LA: 0.5 dog bites per 100,000

But relative to actual population, Anchorage's problem is 34.2 times worse than LA's.  

Dismissing Anchorage's number because it is less than Los Angeles' number is flat out wrong.  

This doesn't mean that if Anchorage had 13 million people it would have 205 dog bites.  Perhaps people in large cities have fewer dogs per capita, or smaller dogs.  Or mail carriers delivering to high rise apartments and condos leave the mail downstairs and have less contact with dogs.  

But to suggest Anchorage numbers are good because our overall number of dog bites is lower than LA's overall number is just wrong.  

Of course, this applies to other stats as well, like murders, suicides, rapes, missing women, etc.  

[If you find errors in my math, let me know.  It's a very rusty skill that I don't use every day.  But even if I'm off a bit, the point will still be valid.]

Blogging Block - Mushrooms And Octopuses

I've got a bunch of started posts, but finishing them gets hard.  Don't want to just be another opinion without strong evidence.  Don't want to post simple stuff that has no meat.  Don't want to say what others have already said.  And it's summer - Anchorage is green and the temperature has crept up to cool but comfortable.  The garden's been taking my time up - I do enjoy seeing everything that's popping up.  Seems most of the perennials have survived the winter.  Also have been pulling up dandelions - first, to get them before they go to seed and second to add the greens to the compost pile.  Still have lots of dead leaves and they need to be layered with fresh greens (and the kitchen compost).

Found a couple of morels had popped up yesterday.   

And getting that picture up reflects one of my obstacles - my airdrop to my laptop stops working after a while and I have to shut everything down and reboot to get it to work again.  

I'm reading David Scheel's Many Things Under a Rock:  The Mysteries of Octopuses for our next book club meeting.  I'm enjoying it immensely.  It's a pleasure to read, I'm learning about octopuses - what they prey on, who preys on them, and how they evade their predators, for starters.  

David Sheel teaches at Alaska Pacific University and has accepted our invitation to join us when we discuss his book.

Sheel writes that "many things under a rock" is a translation of the Eyak word for octopus.

Here's a sample:

"The giant Pacific octopus of Port Graham that had defeated the butter clam mentioned earlier ha taken the heavy bivalve in its suckered arms.  But she was to learn the limits of her strength.  With many suckers on multiple arms attached around both halves of the clamshell the octopus no doubt had tried to pull open this armored prey, perhaps with some patience.  The sucker attachment requires no persistent force, but the octopus has to pull continuously with its arms to pry apart the clam halves, while the clam resists, applying opposing force to hold itself closed. 

Watching an octopus apply this pressure can be a quiet affair.  If the clam wins, this may be a motionless tug-of-war.  With small clams, a giant Pacific octopus quickly and smoothly pulls the clamshell open, sometimes with enough force to break one of the clamshells.  The day octopus opens clams and pries loose prey from their holdfasts on the reef with a series of sharp pulls, its who body jerking until, sometimes with an audible crack, something breaks and the inner flesh is accessible.  The day octopus is very fast, often breaking into its prey or moving on within less than a minute, whereas the gist Pacific octopus my spend a few minutes to tens of minutes opening prey by pulling.  

In its battle with this large butter clam, the octopus tired first.  The clam was too strong, and did not yield to the octopus's strength.  So the octopus tried something else.  On the outside of the clamshell were no fewer than I've separate marks, two marks on one have of the clamshell and three marks on the other side.  The marks were small ovals mea by the giant Pacific octopus.   Each of those was an attempt by the octopus to get through the shell.  

These tiny oval perforations are drill marks.  Octopuses have inside their mouths a radula, which is a rising organ used to break up food.  The radula itself is a ribbonlike membrane  that runs between two muscle groups and lies over and between the posters, two muscularhydrostats.  Our human tongue, as well as octopus arms and the elephant's trunk, are muscular hydrostatic - anatomical constructions that use fluid pressure generated by muscle contractions rather than a rigid skeleton to allow movement.  Inside the octopus mouth, the bolsters can direct the pressure of a bend in the radula ribbon.  Along the length of the radula are rows of micro teeth.  Muscles at either end pull the radula back and forth, rasping it over and wearing away the surface against which it is applied.  

The radula begins the work of drilling, and is sufficient itself to make a hole.  But it cannot penetrate too deeply.  Beyond that, the salivary papillae, also tipped with a few rasping teeth must take over.  The salivary glands secrete enzymes that break dow the shell of prey such as crabs or this clam.  The papillae delivers the caustic secretions directly to the drill site, chemically dissolving the shell, and making it easier for the tooth-tipped salivary papillae to rasp away."

If you are having trouble imaging an octopus radula, here's a picture google says is an octopus radula.  Unfortunately, the link resulted in "Page Not Found."   I don't quite see the rest of the octopus so I'm still a bit confused.  But this helps a little.  

Additionally, I'd note, as I have on occasion that I am still posting about the Respiratory Disease Reports from State every week.  There's one more today.  You can find those at the Respiratory Virus Cases tab above (just under the orange banner.)  You can also go there with this link.  But I'd rather you find the tabs so you can check it any time.  This week COVID cases are up significantly while only one RSV case was reported, and the flu cases are down slightly.

So, many things under a block.