Teddy Partridge Live Blogging Prop. 8 Court Challenge Now

[UPDATE August 4, 2010:  Here's a post on the decision of Judge Walker today] 

Here's  a link if you want to follow the trial in San Francisco which is challenging the constitutionality of the November 2008 California proposition that banned same sex marriage.

[UPDATE 6:39pm Alaska Time:  Here's Day 1 from a different live blogger.
It too is a gay-marriage friendly site.  I've tried to find conservative bloggers who are blogging the trial.  I'm sure they're out there, but I went through several pages of Google without success.  There are conservative posts, but not bloggers providing details from the court.]

This trial, which has the opposing attorneys from Bush v. Gore working together, is controversial on various levels.  People who supported Prop. 8 believe that the voters have spoken and the courts overturning that vote would be anti-democratic.  People challenging that vote believe the right to marry whom you choose is a constitutionally protected civil rights issue that would take a Constitutional amendment, not a simple majority vote to prevent.

Gay groups disagree about the strategy of direct Federal court challenge when the majority of the US Supreme Court is so conservative, fearing a negative Supreme Court will set their cause back.  On the other hand, should this Supreme Court affirm the right to same sex marriage, it would be a far more powerful decision than if a liberal court did.

And then there is the debate over televising this trial.  The judge originally agreed to allow parts of the trial to be shown on YouTube.  This morning the US Supreme Court, as you can read below, has stayed that plan.

Having attended the Alaska political corruption trials here in Anchorage, I have to say actually being there and hearing what is actually said, means one can judge for oneself and not be dependent on the news folks who interpret six to eight hours a day into a 30 second sound bite.

Here's the beginning of the second blog post at FiredogLake.  Click here or on the title for the rest of the post and the next posts as the appear. 

Prop 8: Liveblogging Perry v. Schwarzenegger (Pt. 2)

By: Teddy Partridge Monday January 11, 2010 9:17 am

Phillip Burton Federal Building and Courthouse in San Francisco

[Ed. note: Teddy is live on scene in San Francisco. Part one of his liveblog can be found here.]
Lawyers are settling into their places; it’s 8:38 here. Perhaps the SCOTUS stay has delayed our start here? Twitterers casting the SCOTUS stay as “the first loss for the Olson/Boies team.”
Counsel table camera is now having a little earthquake of its own.
Court personnel setting papers up for Judge Walker.
We still don’t have sound; I sure hope that the AV team remembers to turn it up when they start.
We are reminded not to use any cameras or recording equipment in the overflow courtroom. There is a judge standing by ready to issue contempt orders! A couple of people put away cameras.
This room we’re in is very 1960s ceremonial, lots of wood paneling and not-very-impressive portraits on the wall, perhaps of retired judges? There is a huge plate at the center of the front wall with a large eagle done in gold leaf, the entire wall is grey marble. The room where the trial is actually going to be held looks very similar, except there’s room on the dais for only one judge, while in this room there are fifteen judges’ chairs.
The court recorder just sat down at her seat. . . [for the rest click here.]

A Month of Vegetarian Meals

I'm not the cook these days.  There have been times in our marriage where I did a lot more cooking, but I just don't have the interest in doing all the planning and shopping etc. and J seems to be much more into it and creative and talented these days. 

But trying to be vegetarian does mean constantly looking for different things that are tasty.  So one day I googled something like "one month vegetarian meals" and got to Eat Close to Home., which had a link to a pdf with "Vegetarian Meals for a Month."

Emily Springfield's 12 pages, which I stapled into a booklet, have a

1. Recipe for one main dish for five nights a week for a month (two adults, plus 2 kids)
   
   
2. Weekly shopping list and pantry list

The beauty of this is that you can simply check the pantry list (make sure you have onions, soy sauce, salt, etc.) and then take the shopping list without having to take the time to go through all the recipes to make your own list. 

As excited as I was, before I posted, I wanted to make sure that a) J would go along with this and b) the meals were any good.

Well, I'm here to report, Joan thought it looked great and we had a lot of new (to us) dishes that were fairly easy to make and almost all the meals were winners.  We are two adults though, and I suspect some nights the mythical two kids might have been a bit hungry.  The intro says

• Each week has one or two "dead easy" meals that require little prep and are ready in under 30 minutes (unless you cook brown rice;  then you'll be done in 45 minutes) [it's suggested the brown rice be all cooked at once at the beginning of the week]
  
• Each week has two "average" meals that will take 45 minutes - 1 hour for all prep and cooking
• Each week has one or more "involved" meal that might be best done on a weekend
  

So, go to Eat Close to Home and you can find the recipes at the pdf link.  Rather than put the links to the pdf here, I think you should stop by the original blog to get them.  The link at the top goes to the post with the month of meals she dated March 29, 2008 (the month we ate.)  This link here at the bottom goes to the post that links to a month of meals dated Sept. 12, 2008 (I'm just printing this one out.)

Bon Appetit! 

Winter Green

As I was spraying (nothing evil, just water) some plants this morning, I realized while I put up flower pictures in the summer, I haven't done much here with the indoor plants.  Most of what we have, through  evolution, is very hardy for our dry, neglectful indoor climate.  Given we are gone for periods of time, these are the ones that have proved hardy during periods of drought.  They also survive short winter daylight hours, though we do have some good south facing windows.  We once fussed with lighting, but no longer.

We brought this bromeliad back from my mom's backyard, maybe 15 years ago. It did bloom a few times in the beginning, but not recently. It has nasty thorns and I stick it in the corner and trim the thorns off the tips of the leaves. I think this is less invasive than declawing a cat. I'm not sure what the evolutionary advantage of the thorns is. Perhaps to keep away animals that would eat or otherwise hurt the plant. There aren't any of those in our house, so it shouldn't be a problem.  From the Bromeliad Society International:

Bromeliads are members of a plant family known as Bromeliaceae (bro-meh-lee-AH-say-eye). The family contains over 3000 described species in approximately 56 genera. The most well known bromeliad is the pineapple. The family contains a wide range of plants including some very un-pineapple like members such as Spanish Moss (which is neither Spanish nor a moss). Other members resemble aloes or yuccas while still others look like green, leafy grasses.

In general they are inexpensive, easy to grow, require very little care, and reward the grower with brilliant, long lasting blooms and ornamental foliage. They come in a wide range of sizes from tiny miniatures to giants. They can be grown indoors in cooler climates and can also be used outdoors where temperatures stay above freezing.
Bromeliad History

Bromeliads entered recorded history some 500 years ago when Columbus introduced the pineapple (Ananas comosus) to Spain upon return from his second voyage to the New World in 1493. On that voyage he found it being cultivated by the Carib Indians in the West Indies. Within 50 years this tropical fruit was being cultivated in India and other Old World countries.

[Note:  while they do say "recorded" history, I'm wondering if they checked whether the Incas or other American societies ever wrote anything about bromeliads.]
The one on the left is a much smaller one I brought back this fall from my mom's yard.  It was a victim of the fence building, but it's doing fine now.  







This plant underleaf looks pretty dangerous, and when our kids were little, they stayed clear of it, but really those are soft and fuzzy.  It's a begonia that my mother-in-law had and there are now a lot of folks who have plants that were originally cuttings from that plant. 

It too is extremely hardy, easy to propagate, and it has flowers every year. There just beginning now. When they really open, they'll be pink. And we'll be in Juneau. They last a month or more.



Here's a bit of the stem that kept our kids far from this plant.



In checking out begonias, I think this is a rhizomatous begonia as described on Brad's Begonia World:

Rhizomatous begonias comprise one of the largest if not the largest group of begonias. They are differentiated from the other types of begonias in that they grow from stems (rhizomes) that grow along the surface of the soil. As they grow, the stems put out new roots. There are some semi-upright rhizomatous but even these will fall over and root back to the soil like the other rhizomatous if allowed. There is also a group of rhizomatous that put up upright stems from the creeping rhizome.


Begonia 'Bushmaster'Most rhizomatous begonias are grown for their interesting foliage that comes in various colors and patterns. The majority being shades of green, black, silver and brown. Many also have interesting spirals in the sinus of the leaf or ruffled edges. Nearly all are seasonal bloomers that require a short day period to set blooms, so are late winter to spring blooming. Even though not grown for their flowers, they do put on a spectacular display of blooms during their short bloom season. Except for the few upright types, most rhizomatous begonias make attractive mound shaped plants. Rhizomatous begonias can live in less light than most of the other types so are the best choices for really shady areas. Many also do quite well as ground covers for shady or semi shady areas.

Horticulturally the rhizomatous types are broken up into a couple dozen types based on leaf size and growth. For the purpose of this article, culturally there are four basic types, common type, upright type, upright jointed, and distinctive foliage. Most of the cultural items of this page apply to areas where begonias can be grown outdoors all year. Begonias can be grown outdoors in cold climates but must be brought indoors before frost in the fall.

The philodendron is another hard to kill plant.

While looking up philodendron, I came across this story. It's from the astral world, and since there's not further evidence of more rigorous testing, I think he's reading too much in. But that doesn't negate the possibility that there's more to plants than we think. Maybe the bromeliad appreciates having it's nails clipped.

    The story starts with Cleve Backster of the Cleve Backster School of Lie Detection. It was in 1966 that the curious Backster decided to hook up a polygraph machine to one of his philodendron plants to measure the time it took for water to reach the large leaves. Backster noticed that the plant was measuring what would be excitement in a human subject. He then tried different things with the leaf that had the polygraph electrode attached - even sticking the leaf in a cup of hot coffee. The plant showed no other reactions and even seemed to be getting bored after 15 minutes of testing. [Follow the link for the rest of the experiments.]

The bamboo we drove back from Portland five years ago. It involved getting them inspected and certified to take through Canada and back into the US at the Alaska border. We'd found someone at this rural bamboo nursery outside of Portland from Minnesota and picked varieties that he said grew outside in Minneapolis. But I haven't had the heart to plant them outside. I would say they are surviving, but not thriving. Perhaps this summer I'll plant one outside against the house.

And this is the surviving tamarind. It grew to this point from seed in about three weeks and has stayed like this ever since. The other two plants succumbed to lack of water, even though I was watching pretty closely.



And here's the world outside this cocoon of temperance.

Two and a Half Weeks Past Solstice

I took these while I was clearing some of the old snow from the driveway today. I did play with the background of this bit.

Kaleidoscopic Radio Dreaming

Before I ever got up this morning, before I was even really awake, NPR had already fed my morning dreamscape by poking a number of dormant brain cells.    Laura Veirs  talked about Carol Kaye the rocking 60's bassist I 'met' last year in the movie "The Wrecking Crew" that played in the 2008 Anchorage International Film Festival.  Plus Veirs, who has studied Chinese, mirrored my experience of learning and losing many characters.  Damn, they must be in there somewhere. Her music was soft and soothing, but it was when she said,"Wow, there are a lot of songs in this guitar" that I slid somewhat into consciousness.  My MacBook has a lot of stories in it and I need to set them free.  And my pillow claimed me once again.  But then there was Elizabeth Gilbert talking about "Eat, Pray, Love" and her new book "Committed" and how she and her Brazilian lover had committed to live together forever, but not to marry.  Both had had bad divorces.  But then the INS stepped in and marriage became the only practical solution if they wanted to live together and be in the US at all.  My 39th wedding anniversary is coming up this month and we've managed to stay together by never stopping too long,  moving on to next another stage of love. As things become routine, comfortable, and even stale, we start that scary task of pushing into unexplored and risky interpersonal territory, until we get to the exhilarating other side and new understandings of ourselves and how we are together.  We've been edging towards another such crossing and Gilbert's words about marriage poked those cells where I've been working on what I need to do.  I drifted back into sleep with scattered brain cells glowing in shades of peach which somehow I need to convey to J.  My dreams wandered on until I was in a classroom hearing anthropologist Paula Holmes-Eber lecturing marines about how when they blow up a bridge in an Afghan village, it means the farmers on the other side can no longer bring their vegetables to market and no longer earn a living and a whole tribe becomes impoverished.  And the parts of my brain that handle the differences between short term and long term impacts of what we do lit up before I dozed off only to become hazily aware of a discussion of committing Facebook suicide.   That pulled me into consciousness abruptly as I heard (not necessarily what they said) about wiping out friends and shutting down accounts and their being blocked by Facebook.  Fortunately, Facebook is a minor distraction in my life as I've never quite taken enough time to figure out how to make it work for me.  It's there, I see my wall when I get an email message saying someone has contacted me, and I even updated my profile the other day, but while Facebook suicide seemed extreme, I was reassured. 

And so I now face another day, my brain bombarded with ideas and directions and I have to focus on those I can actively pursue and let go of the others until another time when they are ripe and I am ready to take them on.

CS, in answer to your question about how do I manage to find new ideas to write about everyday, perhaps this is a partial answer.  A lifetime of ideas is buried in the grey matter and each day asteroids strike parts of my brain, reigniting dormant thoughts, only a few of which ever get captured.  Of course, this is true of everyone.  You just have to make room in the rush of life's demands to pay attention.

More Steps on the Way to Juneau

I'm still trying to figure out the right way to blog about this upcoming Juneau gig without bringing heat onto my boss.  He's seen the other posts that have touched on this and thought they were fine, so let's proceed.

Yesterday I went into the office to meet with Rep. G about the idea of setting up a Legislative Fellowship program and more hiccups because of my unusual status.  The regs have four clear categories of legislative folks:  legislators, staff, interns, and volunteers.  It turns out that volunteers tends to mean people who come in and work for a few hours, either someone who knows the representative or to get the experience of working in a legislative office.  There's a high school program, for example, where students do some work for a few hours a week.

My category is volunteer.  But I'm actually going to be more like a regular staff person.  Staff get keys to the office and id's for the computer system and email accounts.  Volunteers do not.  So there was some discussion about how to get me the staff access while I'm a volunteer, and also whether I need it all.  Probably getting into the building and office shouldn't be a serious problem since there ought to be others there when I need access.  But since they want me to be in the loop on things, having an email account and access to the internal system seems necessary.

Rep. G's vision for me is something like a scholar in residence and he'd like to see a program like that in the legislature.  Early on in my career I had a NASPAA Fellowship (NASPAA is the National Association of Schools of Public Administration and Affairs).  That program was set up for young public administration faculty to have work experience in federal agencies and I spent one year at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in DC working as a program and policy analyst.  I got to work with people like the director of the National Weather Service and a key job I had that year was to study the impacts of applying user fees to  NOAA services and products.   And during the budget process, I got to play the role of OMB (Office of Management and Budget) and question the department heads on their proposed budgets in mock hearings before they really went before OMB.  The Fellows from different agencies meet regularly to share experiences. It was a great program that gave me lots of valuable experience and insights that helped me a lot when I went back to teaching at the end of the Fellowship.

Later in my career I had a Fulbright Fellowship in Hong Kong.  But that was a more traditional teaching position at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  But it did lead to more  research and connections in China. But it had some of same characteristics of getting to know a new institution and working with the other Fulbright Fellows in Hong Kong that year.

The general idea about such fellowships is to get professionals and/or scholars to work in a legislative or governmental setting where there can be a mutually beneficial relationship.  It's usually on a limited time basis - one session, one school year, one year - and then they go back to their primary employer.


So, I've been looking at different programs that embody the ideas that Rep. G has in mind.  What I've found so far is this: 

• There are a number of Legislative Fellows programs in different
  states, California, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Oregon, to name a few.  But
  these are really what I'd call internship programs because they are for
  undergraduate and graduate students.  Alaska already has this sort of program, it's called the Legislative Internship Program.  
• The White House Fellowship program selects about a dozen
  professionals a year from a wide array of professions to work in the
  White House or in Federal agencies.  They basically work for their
  agency for the year with special meetings of the Fellows as a whole.
  This was the model I was looking at - though, perhaps it might make
  sense to have something just for the legislative session.
  
  
• There are a number of Congressional Fellowship programs - for
  Americans and for citizens of select countries around the world to come
  to the US and work in the Federal and even in some state legislatures.
  (It might be useful to see if Alaska can snag one of these..)  Many of
  these programs seem to be organized by other agencies that do the work
  of selecting the Fellows - Fulbright, Professional Associations (ie.
  engineers, pharmacists, etc.)
  
  
• There are similar Fellowship programs that place fellows in Federal
  Agencies. 
  
  
• There are scholar in residence programs as well.  The NY City library
  has one, but most seem to be at Universities. 
  

So now we are trying to pack stuff. Some things are easier than going to Thailand. We can have our mail forwarded for example. There's a caravan of legislative folks driving down to catch the ferry at Haines and someone in the office said I could give him a suitcase to take along. We have a housesitter set up to move in. But I know there will be a million last minute items. But what happens happens and worrying isn't going to help much. Everything seems to work out one way or another.

Ignite

I met Dean Franklin when I took a picture of his (I assumed) wife and daughter at the Peking Opera presentation by the Confucius Institute last November.  He told me about Ignite - a program he's working on that gets community people talking about things they're passionate about.  I was interested, but as it turned out, it's happening the day after we leave for Juneau.  But he emailed me some information about it and I can certainly encourage you to go and send me your report so I can post it.  (Luckily, I didn't delete my junk file tonight, cause that's where the email was. )  It's another free Anchorage event that promises to be worth more than a lot of stuff you have to pay for.  


The next Ignite Anchorage conference will be held at the
Snow Goose Theater one week from tonight, on Thursday, January 14th at 7pm.

We've got some great speakers lined up to give some fascinating presentations:

• Nils Andreassen "Vibrant Democracy"
• Cindy Baldwin "How Toastmasters Can Help YOU Be a Better Communicator and Leader"
• Marian Call "The Art and Science of Songwriting"
• Cindy Franklin "The Best Job You’ll Ever Have"
• Sarah Hurst "Transforming Alaska History into a Play and Graphic
  Novel"
• Karen Keller "Off the Shelf"
• Karl LeRay "What the @!#%$! Do Those Motorcycle Hand Signals
  Mean?"
• Bob Nicoll "There is Power in the Clarity of Your
  Articulation"
• Aliza Sherman "I Survived Winter in Tok, Alaska"

We are also holding a food and fund drive for Food Bank of Alaska at this event. We are asking all attendees to bring a donation of food or a monetary donation to help Food Bank of Alaska restock their warehouse for the new year. Food Bank of Alaska is typically running low on food and funds in January due to their generous contributions to our fellow
Alaskans over the holidays. If you are bringing a donation of food, please see Food Bank of Alaska's shopping list to find out what they need. If you plan to make a monetary donation, please bring a check made out to "Food Bank of Alaska".


If you haven't already done so, register to attend now (click that big red button just below). It's free, it will be fun and you'll be supporting a good cause.

Interesting People and Events at UAA

I had a meeting at UAA Wednesday and the walk over in the new snow was wonderful.

These palm bending tree trunks looked a lot more 

mysterious in a night picture not long ago.

And Nikki Giovanni will be speaking on campus January 21, 2009.  We'll be in Juneau by then so I'll miss this, but you've got a warning now to put this on your calendar.  And if you don't know who she is, go to the library and check out one of her books and start reading before she gets here.

Here's a sample (taken from ncat.edu)

Balances  

in life
one is always
balancing
like we juggle our mothers
against our fathers
or one teacher
against another
(only to balance our grade average)
3 grains of salt
to one ounce truth
our sweet black essence
or the funky honkies down the street
and lately I've begun wondering
if you re trying to tell me something
we used to talk all night
and do things alone together
and i've begun
(as a reaction to a feeling)
to balance
the pleasure of loneliness
against the pain
of loving you 

I also visited with Fannie, with whom I worked in the past.  She had a great picture up on the wall.  

Her niece, Nicole, from Napakiak, was Miss Indian World 2008-2009.




Fannie also had a picture of her nephew as her screen saver.  He's in Iraq and due back in April.   




While I was in the College of Business and Public Policy I had a chance to meet the Interim Associate Dean, Dr. Claudia Clark.  We chatted a bit and then it got interesting when I learned she was also a filmmaker.  An award winning filmmaker.  She won an award for best production last year for twelve 1 minute shorts on the International Polar Year Educational Outreach and is up for another award this year for her historical biography of Alaska's Bob Bartlett.  It's called Mr. Alaska: Bob Bartlett goes to Washington.  In the video she talks a bit about it.  

 



And at the film website, I couldn't help but steal this picture of Bob Bartlett.  Regular readers will surely know why I like it. 










I also learned that Freakonomics author Stephen Dubner will be in Anchorage at the end of January to talk at the Anchorage Economic Development Council (AEDC) and that he'll spend a day with UAA students. 

Lt. Gov. and I Agree on Body Scanners

I was pleased to see that the Lt. Gov. of Alaska and I are in complete agreement on body scans for most passengers as an approach to security at airports.  I suspect on most other issues we aren't nearly so closely aligned.  Craig Campbell presents the position much more clearly and persuasively than I did in the previous post.   Some quotes from his piece in today's Anchorage Daily News:

While serving as Alaska's commissioner of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, which oversees state Homeland Security, I questioned the use of full body scanners at airport security checkpoints. I quickly determined their use was an excessive and unnecessary invasion of personal privacy. . .

 Full body scanners create graphic images of our bodies that, as the ACLU pointed out, are "pictures of virtually naked bodies that reveal not only sexual organs but also intimate medical details such as colostomy bags and mastectomy scars." Full body scanners amount to a visual strip search by depicting a naked electronic image viewed by a federal agent.

We are told that the images will be immediately deleted from the system after the passenger exits security. Really, we already know that e-mails are not eliminated when deleted from computers and that these images can be reconstituted. . .

 We can achieve safety without infringing on personal liberties. Abdulmutallab's explosives would have been detected if existing security procedures, already in place, had been fully utilized. We don't need knee-jerk reactions that deprive Americans of yet another civil liberty in the name of security to ensure air travel is safe.

I hope the Anonynous commenter in the previous post reads this whole piece by a man who oversaw Homeland Security in Alaska. 

Creating Child Porn to Stop Terrorists?

At what point do we say, "Enough is enough"?   For some reason, we are willing to let 40,000 people a year die in traffic accidents in the US and others to die because they don't have adequate health insurance, but we're willing to give up more and more of our dignity every year to make sure no one dies from a terrorist attack on an airplane.

The terrorists don't have to take any planes down, they just have to think up new ways to mess with the security equipment and we all have to go through another hoop at the airport.  This new one is pretty invasive.

This picture comes from the Guardian which carried an article about the full body scanners in the UK, where they've been delayed because they would breach child pornography laws.  

Here are some excerpts from the story which you can get in full at the link.

The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned. . .

They also face demands from civil liberties groups for safeguards to ensure that images from the £80,000 scanners, including those of celebrities, do not end up on the internet. The Department for Transport confirmed that the "child porn" problem was among the "legal and operational issues" now under discussion in Whitehall after Gordon Brown's announcement on Sunday that he wanted to see their "gradual" introduction at British airports.

A 12-month trial at Manchester airport of scanners which reveal naked images of passengers including their genitalia and breast enlargements, only went ahead last month after under-18s were exempted. . .

And what sort of rays pass through our bodies?  Do we know they don't cause cancer or some other harm?  When I was a kid we had fluoroscope machines in the shoe stores so we could see our feet inside our shoes.  Until someone realized this was not healthy for kids.   Will this be the same?  Scan now, check on health dangers later? 

What if airline passengers were ready to turn around from security and say no?   Just flying less doesn't seem to work.  Can we figure out ways that get people to join in a mass boycott of airport security, ways that overcome all the pressures to just suck it up and let them do it to you - the cost of the ticket, the inconvenience of making huge changes in one's plans, the threat from the TSA for doing anything to question them, etc.   

It has to be planned so people can get their refunds (buying first class tickets maybe?), where enough people do it to get attention, where airlines are affected by the loss of already paid passenger revenue, and where people have the time to deal with the likely hassle.   It's time to force the powers that be to consider reasonableness as well as safety in designing security.

Maybe here in Alaska where privacy is protected by our State Constitution we can argue that TSA is forcing us to give up our State Constitutional rights to privacy if we want to exercise our Federal Constitutional rights to interstate travel. 

You know the frog in the pot of water story?  Well, bubbles are starting to appear as I write.

Mt View Forum - Interviews Patrick Flynn

The Mt. View Forum blog demonstrates today how blogs make important contributions to our local information sources.  His interview with Assemblyperson Patrick Flynn covers a number of important issues:  the budget, property taxes, public-private partnerships, land use planning, and utilities.  All, of course, in the context of Anchorage today.  It's definitely worth ten minutes of your time, if nothing else, get a sense of Flynn, to get an intelligent view of Municipal issues, and to see the Mt. View Forum blog. 

Tea Beats Swords - Red Cliff and The Tea Master

J wanted to see Red Cliff because she studies tai chi and there was supposed to be some good sword moves.  I was more skeptical.  I'd seen the previews and it looked like an artsy war flick that would require a trip to the blood bank afterward.  I was right.  A friend afterward said,  "but it had an anti war message."   I'm not sure saying "Today there are no victors" after almost two and a half hours (total 147 min) of blood, via arrows, lances, and a whole array of pointy weapons I couldn't name, plus lots of fire, typhoid victims floated into the enemy camp as a weapon, to name a few, qualifies it as an anti-war movie.  The desensitization to all those severed and burning body parts, the normalization of human destruction is a visual message far more powerful that those few words.  And the Red Cliff website touts this dubious reviewer comment:

"The spectacular battle scenes are the engorged heart of the delirious adventure..."

This sort of Chinese historical epic plays on several channels every night on Beijing television, so it's not particularly new for me, though the story is good and the film is well made. I just don't need to spend what time I have left in this world watching people killing each other.  And I just don't think this is an effective way to end warfare.

But there was one scene that reminded me of one of the films at the Anchorage International Film Festival that I particularly liked, but in the rush of movies, never got to mention - The Tea Master.  It was one of my favorites.  A short, well-made film with a great story. It turns out the filmmakers were able to concentrate on other aspects of the production because they already had a good story:

The Tea Master is Aaron Au’s rendition of a Japanese fable titled “The Samurai and the Tea Master”. The story has been told for hundreds of years and there are numerous versions.

The Tea Master's story is told at hubpages:

A humble chado, or tea ceremony master was challenged to a duel by an unscrupulous ronin who was confident of winning with ease. The chado knew he was no match for the master-less samurai but could not refuse without losing honour, so he prepared to die.

He therefore went to see his neighbour a Kenjutsu (sword) master, to ask how he should best prepare to die with honour. “ How honourable your intent neighbour” he says. “but before we talk of such things we must drink some tea together”

The chado set about the task of preparing the tea in his usual manner. He was clearly relishing this, probably the last, time he would be able to perform his life long art. As he became absorbed in the ceremony the sword master was greatly impressed by the serenity that this supposedly doomed man was demonstrating. (You can read the rest of the story at hubpages. Picture from The Tea Master web page.)

The tea ceremony is an important part of Japanese and Chinese culture and has a powerful effect on people who can appreciate its art.

In Red Cliff, a tea ceremony also plays an important role in distracting the power hungry prime minister/general Cao Cao just long enough for the wind and the war to change direction.  

Perhaps in the next fifty or 100 years,  enough research will be completed that we will better understand why some people have such a strong need to control others and to destroy those who get in their way.  My suspicions are that the secret lies partly in genetics but that genetic disposition doesn't need to show itself if children get the love and support they all need to become whole people.  I'm guessing that when the Rush Limbaugh story comes out on film, we will learn about an abused fat kid who spent his formative years fantasizing his revenge on all the hip people of the world who ridiculed him as a kid.  Too bad he didn't learn the tea ceremony.

Evidential Language

My son sent me this linguistic tidbit from Barking Up The Wrong Tree:

Tuyuca requires verb-endings on statements to show how the speaker knows something. Diga ape-wi means that “the boy played soccer (I know because I saw him)”, while diga ape-hiyi means “the boy played soccer (I assume)”. English can provide such information, but for Tuyuca that is an obligatory ending on the verb. Evidential languages force speakers to think hard about how they learned what they say they know.

Since most of my posts are way too long, I'll just let you ponder the significance of this on your own. (Tuyuca is spoken, it says, in the eastern Amazon. Ethnologue says there are about 815 speakers in Columbia and Brazil.)

Share the Damn Link

Below is an email I got today asking me to trade links with another website. That was a key strategy offered for getting more hits when I first started blogging. But then it was more bloggers linking to each other. Technorati, one of the sites that tracks blogs and ranks them,
now says

Please note that links in blogrolls don’t count towards Authority, as they are not indicative of interest in relevant content; we stopped including blogroll links in August 2008.

On occasion I've mentioned ways sellers have attempted to advertise on this site.  Some leave comments - usually with a couple of generic compliments about the site first.  Then put in a link to an unrelated website.  Usually I just delete the comments unless they are relevant to the post.  For example, I deleted one that sold modern Italian furniture that was in a comment on a large Asian furniture complex that we visited in Thailand, but I left a link to dvd's that taught children Mandarin Chinese that was linked to a post where I had pictures of children writing Chinese characters.

Others offer to pay you if you write a positive post about their products.  They pay more if you don't mention that you're getting paid.  I'm sure a lot of bloggers must take them up on that, but I think that's pretty slimy.  People buy things that bloggers endorse because they think this is a genuine testimonial. And it hurts blogger credibility in general when people find out some bloggers are paid to do that.   It's an example of how the market contaminates honest dialogue. (I'm not against the market, I'm just for honest, sensible understanding of its benefits and costs.)

Dear owner of http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com,


I'm the webmaster of http://www.sharethedamnroad.com.


We came across your site on the Internet and feel that it would fit
perfectly into our collection of quality links at
http://www.sharethedamnroad.com/content/link-partners.

1. Here's the carrot as he works on my vanity by calling this a quality link.
2. It's about bikes, and this is a bicycle friendly blog.  But it's not like the two Alaska bike links I have on the right that talk about biking in general.  It's selling bike jerseys.
3. And it's a generic email.  He didn't even use my first name, which isn't hard to find.

We've already placed a link to your website along with a description at our site on the page, which we encourage you to check for accuracy. Once you place a link back to use, your link will be moved up to a more visable spot on the page.

3. And I get a link from them, and when I get back to them I get more visible shelf space.

We'd appreciate it if you place a link back to our site using the following HTML code (just copy and paste it into your links page): http://www.sharethedamnroad.com" title="Cycling Jeresys That Make A Statement">Road Cycling Jerseys Cycling Jeresys That Make A Statement On your page, the code will look like this: Road Cycling Jerseys Cycling Jeresys That Make A Statement If you'd like the description of your site modified, the category changed, or if you have any other cross-promotion ideas, feel free to email us. Please note that if you don't place a reciprocal link to us somewhere on your site within a week, the link to your site will automatically be removed from our directory. Please link to us using the code above, and let us know where we can find the link.

4. And now the stick - put something up or we're going to take your link down.

Best regards, Jonathan Ciaccio Cycling@ciaccioseo.com This is NOT SPAM -- this is a one-time reciprocal link request. We have NO INTENTION to email you again. You can also reply to this email with REMOVE in the subject line to make sure we'll NEVER send you any more e-mails in the future.

I'd guess the difference between this and spam is that these aren't computer generated messages to zillions of people.  At least I'm assuming that these went to bike related blogs.  Though biking is not the focus of this blog.

As these things go, this is fairly reasonable. It came as an email, not as a comment. That's good.  It's bike related and I like that too. I'm guessing someone saw the post I did with the Share (bike) sign. But I do think wearing "Share the Damn Road" on your back when you bike through traffic is more likely to get you in trouble (all you need to do is piss off one driver) than increase support for cyclists.

So I wrote back saying I'd probably put up a post. And so I have. Not to get a link on his site.  It gives me a chance to remind readers of the kinds of things people do to advertise in the blogging world.

Boycott blogs with non-transparent paid advertising testimonials - if you can figure out which ones they are.

Under 30 at Out North

We made it on time to Out North last night for Under 30. (Under 30 refers to the time (minutes) of the performance, not the age of the performers. It seems they now spell it Under :30 which I thought was a typo, but now see it's trying to clarify the meaning.) Last week we got to Santaland Diaries a few minutes late and it had already begun and was full, so we weren't allowed in, although we had purchased tickets in advance online. We were able to transfer our payment to this show. So we got there early enough this time to check ou the retrospective exhibit of the Under 30: Sweet Sixteen Archive Exhibit.



The exhibit has a wall length time line of the Under 30 programs from the beginning. And then there were these various props from different shows over the years. We've been to a fair number of them and they are always interesting, and usually there's at least one performer we know.

The last page of the program has a recruitment ad for next year's Under 30.

Many of the performances over the years have been done by people who don't normally do theatrical work.  It seems like as good a way as possible to work on and present something important to the world.  A lot of the work is still in the development stage.  This is the first public showing and gets important feedback for the next stage, if the person wants to go further with it.  Some manage to work well even at this stage. 

There's a more complete proposal description on their website.

The performances were introduced by Scott Turner Schofield who is a visiting performer who will be putting on Debutante Balls Jan. 14 -17. He seemed totally comfortable onstage and I'm sorry we're going to miss his show, but we leave for Juneau on the 11th.










Given that taking pictures in the middle of the show is often forbidden I'm filling in with these pictures from the exhibit.

All four performances last night kept my attention, though for me the third one - Jonathan Lang's "Radio" - worked most fully. It was a retrospective of radio in Alaska, starting from when Jonathan's family arrived in Alaska through his days on radio in Anchorage. The juxtaposition of taped 'radio' in the background, some props on stage, and probably the relatively uncomplicated content, made it the most complete and unified piece for me.



Van Le's "Letters to Ho Chi Minh" represented, perhaps, the most ambitious work, as she tried to articulate her family's experiences as refugees who survived smugglers, pirates, refugee camp in Malaysia on the way to the United States and the cross generational conflicts of children who want to know what happened and parents who want to forget. Some of the obstacles she still has to work out in the piece are technical ones - jumping back and forth between different time periods. Others are probably more emotional - I think more reenactment rather than telling of the stories would be more powerful. I got to meet Van Le when she was volunteering for the Anchorage International Film Festival and so it was particularly fun to be able to see how she put this together. The photo was taken after her performance, but before they moved things off the stage for the next performance.

Don Decker's piece  integrated video into the performance.  I liked a lot of the parts - particularly the extreme closeups of the lines in the videos.  And he had some audience members laughing almost non-stop.  I just didn't follow how all the pieces came together as one coherent statement.  But maybe that wasn't intended.

Mark Muro's monologue started shakey, then got into gear, and then seemed to veer into different directions.  Mark's done the Under 30 thing four times before according to the program and he could talk off the top of his head and it could be interesting and provocative.  And I've heard him do that more effectively than his piece last night - but then last night he had to carry it off for thirty minutes.  But Mark took the challenge and stood up and did his thing.

That's one reason people should go to the performance this afternoon at 3 or next weekend.  The challenge is out there for next year's Under 30.  This is something anyone could actually do.  The only thing different from those on stage and you and me is that they put in their proposals.  So, being in the audience is also a personal challenge.  What do you have to say and how could you say it so it would keep an audience's attention for 30 minutes?

November/December 2009 Google Searches

Once again I post some of the search terms people used and what they got to list some interesting search terms and to see how google works.


Bullseye

santa monica trapeze school - this was an image search that got to a post on the Santa Monica pier with a photo of the trapeze school.

rockin dentist - I actually have a post called 'Rockin Dentist'. I got scheduled once with another dentist in my dentist's office and it turned out he has a second amateur career as a rock guitarist.

how do you get prickly pears outta your skin - I had the answer to that at the bottom of a post on eating prickly pear. (Duct tape)

unfuck the world, the song -  This got to an audio clip of the song from Kathryn Blume's play Boycott when she performed it here in Anchorage.  But the most interesting part of this was that the computer seeking this came from the World Bank.  Does this mean they finally have defined the problem they're working on? 


black members of congress -  I take a certain amount of pleasure when someone at
the ISP "Information Systems, U.S. House of Representatives" comes to a blog in Alaska to get information about Congress.  


fruit flies fungus gnats difference - Got to  Tiny Black Bugs - Fruit Fly or Fungus Gnat?  The visitor, from Boston, probably had fruit flies, because the outclick was to the Oklahoma State University page on fruit flies, not the Colorado link on fungus gnats. 


pantalla en negro snow leopard - Ah, even in Spanish they get to  snow leopard black screen disease. 

Close


picture of seven mangoes -  This image search got a picture labeled "six mangoes in plastic."

famous people who was born in pansilvania that start with the letter c - First, I need to say this person was from Pennsylvania.  Google did manage to get him to the post on famous people born in 1909, and two - David Riesman and Joseph L. Mankiewicz - were born in Pennsylvania, but as you can see there was only one c between them and it wasn't at the beginning.


difference between a clique and a colloquialism - Never thought about a connection between those two words, but I can see how this Dutch searcher might have. Unfortuantely, I don't have anything on that and google sent him to Difference between a Cyclone and a Hurricane. (I probably jumped to the wrong conclusion on the nationality. It was from Holland, but Schiphol, which is the Amsterdam airport and the computer uses US English.)

a yellow egg with a tan spot. the moment you look away from it, it moves to another space - got to a picture of a yellow egg I did in photo shop in class last year..

Not even close.


2.employee bloggers sometimes use pseudonyms. under what conditions might the blogging service be forced to provide the real identity of the blogger? - This one got to a post that at least touches the issues here, The Right to Privacy, Bloggers and Privacy. This post discusses privacy in general and specifically the outing of Alaska's most read blogger at Mudflats. It doesn't quite get into the question sought though.

gender butterfly abdomen - When I stopped to think about it, it seemed to be about how to tell the gender of a butterfly.  If it was, it got a pretty picture of a white butterfly with brown markings in the foothills in Northern Thailand, but nothing on determining gender.  This one got me wondering. If you're interested, Clay shows how to identify a Monarch's gender when it's still a chrysalis.  Dragonfly power gives a more thorough explanation.  Scroll down to Part 1.

do flies know when they're full - Interesting query.  I'm not even sure where this one landed. I certainly didn't have the answer. 



do humans live in alaska -  This one came from a computer that is set for Arabic from Jordan.  So at least we can say some people in that part of the world are as ignorant of us as we are of them.  Google sent them to the post "To Live and Die in Wales Alaska"  He did get the answer, that yes we do. 

do hipsters go skiing -   I wrote about the movie Hipsters and I mention skiing now and then in my posts, but there's nothing that answers the question.  Google took them to a post on the Russian movie Hipsters that won the Anchorage International Film Festival Best Feature.

Missed the target even.

if you don't know when you were born how old are you -  This is a legitimate question. Got to famous people born in 1909.

how to get lover out of house  - got them to "cat lovers should check out this house" 

racket tailed drongo sound clip - There actually is video with a racket tailed drongo calling, but Google took this person to a post in the same month on Burma and bio fuels policy.  If the searcher had been persistent, he might have followed my search instructions in the upper right hand corner.  If he had searched for the word drongo on that page he would have found the link to the post with what he was after.  But the Sitemeter data suggests that he didn't get to it.  He was so close to exactly what he wanted, but Google should have put him on the right page. 

how much does it cost to get into amber in nature the mueseum in warsaw??tell me now!!! i need this for homework!!! - Despite the fact that my blog can't even come close to answering the question, What Do I Know came up first out of 1340 hits.  Why?  Because google uses robots, not people to find the hits.  They found a page with enough posts to match six of the words in his search command.  (It does sound like some bratty kid doesn't it?)  But there are no two words together even.  If mine was the number 1 hit, can you imagine how useless the others were?  And if there were some that got him to the museum in warsaw, why was mine number 1?  Does google think it's better to give lots of wrong answers than to say, "Sorry, we can't find anything useful"?  Here's the google link he found:

What Do I know?: July 2009

You can get the whole letter at the Warsaw Gazette.] ...... There's so much to tell...... I don't need to do my homework, the college guys like me just the way I am. ...... Seward Highway that is now a bike trail to Girdwood, I found this nature lesson - on cottonwoods. ...
whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html - Cached -

Google Sense of Humor

politicians laughing - This image search got to a picture of a white crested laughing thrush. Why not? Unfortunately, it wasn't even a good picture.

Renewing the Brain for 2010

It's time to pump up the brain and get moving on this second decade. It's not that I partied hard last night, but I'm still trying to get some other things done. We did connect on an apartment in downtown Juneau this week, so the ethics issue over staying with a friend is moot. I'm trying to get up this year's post on famous people born a hundred years ago, but my original source of such information has changed its format and a new source has way more names than I can handle. But I can tell you at least two seem to be still alive - a sports legend and an economist. Some everyone knows - like Mother Theresa and Jacques Cousteau - and some are obscure and I might not include. At least one of the obscure has affected so many lives I probably will include him - the inventor of instant noodle soup. There's lots of B actors I think I'll skip, though my mother might know them. More tomorrow. The bread is almost done then we're off to friends for dinner.

Think Bike in the New Year

Some of you might be wondering why I keep taking pictures of bike racks.  We all see what we are looking for.  When my wife was pregnant, suddenly we saw all the other pregnant women, a phenomenon we'd barely noticed.  Nothing had changed in the world, only in our heads.  When we bought our first Subaru, we suddenly began seeing how many Subarus were on the streets of Anchorage.  



[This first picture was at the Providence Hospital garage yesterday.  I biked over (about a mile) to get my teeth cleaned.  There were three bikes (one fat bike on the right) and two mountain bikes in this rack - mine's the fourth - and there were four in the other rack in the background.  This is winter.  I've never seen more than one or two bikes here in the winter before.  These bike racks are close to full, again, in the winter.  The summer is going to mean that Prov will need more bike racks for sure.]

Cars dominate life in the US and increasingly elsewhere.  But in many ways they are the default status quo, bolstered by habit, by advertising, by city planning, and by our mental models that say we can't live without cars.  But my personal experience is that using alternative transportation - such as bikes or walking or buses - when feasible is really liberating.  When challenged to change, we think about what we're giving up, not what we're going to gain. Foot power not only saves petroleum, the air, and parking spaces,  it also keeps us healthier, connects us to the world we usually whiz by - the trees, the flowers, interesting houses, new shops (old shops we never saw) and to other people.

It's NOT either/or.  We won't eliminate the auto.  That's not the point.  We'll just use it less.  If everyone drove 20% less, that would be a huge impact.  So we just need to rethink some of the short trips.  A mile walk is extremely doable.  It shouldn't take more than 20 minutes once someone is fit.   But walks of 3 miles - hikers do it all the time as recreation - are also very doable.  But few people think about walking from downtown to UAA, but it's about a 60 - 80 minute walk.  I don't have time for that, you say.  But if you walk, you can skip the trip to the gym.  When we talk about bikes, the distances we can go increases.

[This second picture was last night at Benson and LaTouche.  The biker is in the white oblong.  It would have been better in video as his head lamp and bike lamp both flashed on and off.  These LED lights are making winter bikers much more visible to drivers.]




So, there are two reasons I do these posts:

1.  To raise people's awareness that more and more people are biking, even in the winter,  change people's idea of what is possible.  It's not just fanatics who are on their bikes.  It's normal, average people who have found that it works in their lives.

2.  To document the changes that are going on as people do start using their bikes - some just making occasional use of the bike instead of a car when it's a short trip and others actually commute every day by bike, some doing ten mile round trips or more, even in winter. 

It's the last day of the year.  Even if you aren't going to write down any New Year's resolutions, this still is a time to reflect on how we've lived our lives and how we might do it better. 

I urge you to 'see' all the bikers around you.  I urge you to try to abandon your car for at least one trip a week - and either walk or bike instead.  Start small.  You're parked at Barnes and Noble.  Instead of driving the short distance to Blockbusters for a video, walk there and back.  Once you start making some small trips like that without the car, you'll start thinking about other times you could walk or bike instead.  For some, you can start in January.  For others, go ahead, wait until April when the snow is almost gone and there's more light.  I promise you, you'll feel better.