When Guns Left Campus

by Carla Helfferich

The recent brouhaha about weaponry on the University of Alaska campuses has been giving me spasms in my old-timer muscles. I’ve been associated with the university (now reduced to the lonely University of Alaska Fairbanks, but once the university) for longer than have most of the buildings now standing on Campus Hill.

Looking back on my days there as a student in 1959, I can be glad that guns then were so well controlled on campus. Too many of my fellow students still had that sense of adolescent immortality (“It can’t happen to ME!”) even when they were dripping blood from the skinning knife’s slip; still others fell into intense, romantic depressions, but St. Joseph’s Hospital (now Fairbanks Memorial) was pretty good at coping with too many pills on top of too much alcohol. Easy access to guns would have made for too many deaths by accident and by suicide, instead of so many cases of Close, But No Cigar, followed by some months of embarrassment for that student.

And in retrospect, I appreciate that I never had to worry about being blown away by a furious or despondent student when I was working as an instructor. I had my share of both—all university-level instructors do, eventually—young people in the grip of hormonal hurricanes or other upheavals. The typical college freshman hasn’t yet had time to learn that most hurricanes and upheavals pass, if you give them time and patience.

Yet, oddly perhaps, the impetus for the then-tight control of guns on campus came because of some adults in residence. That at least was the story I was told when I first came to campus. This is a place of hunters, I commented to a professor. I see by the student handbook that guns must be stored in special lockers, to be removed only with suitable permissions. Surprises me. Ah, he said, they instituted that policy just a couple of years ago. This is the history he gave me:

The university drew in a goodly number of Korean War veterans, attracted like so many of us by the Alaska mystique but with the chance at an education funded by the GI Bill. These men had been through battles and stresses well beyond adolescent pangs. The university also noted they were old enough to drink legally, and wisely decided the veterans deserved a habitation of their own. Thus Vets’ Dorm, a great shabby barracks-like building, held only men who had lived with their weapons by their sides. That they should continue to have handguns or long guns in their rooms was unquestioned…until one day, in an end room on the top floor, the resident dropped his supposedly unloaded rifle. He was just going to tuck it away under his bed, but it slipped out of his hand. The butt struck the floor hard, and the rifle discharged. The lightly built dorm walls offered nearly no resistance to the bullet. Five rooms down the hall, the occupant bent down to pick up his bottle of beer. When he straightened up, he found that the greasy spot on the wall that marked where he always leaned his head when sitting on his bed had a hole dead center.

When the Dean of Students proposed that guns henceforth should reside only in special lockers, no one in Vets’ Dorm objected.

Well, that was then, this is now, and our legislators seem unconcerned about adolescent angst or accidents. Once the Supreme Court decided that the portion of the Second Amendment referencing “a well-regulated militia” had no relevance, the right to bear arms became some kind of absolute, and a spirit of vigilantism pervaded the land. No matter how stressed, every college freshman has the right to carry a concealed weapon to the next kegger, ready to fire at a moment’s notice. No, I’m not comfortable on campus any more, and yes, that doesn’t matter to the legislators.

One question: are concealed weapons legal on the floor of the legislature?

Carla Helfferich has been in Alaska since 1959, mostly associated with the university, including first editing, then writing the Alaska Science Forum columns. She served as the first managing editor for the University of Alaska Press. She is the author of Cut Bait, a light mystery, and the editor in chief of McRoy & Blackburn, Publishers.

Gerry Mander in Alaska

It has been an insanely busy month, and more excitement is coming down the pike.

The big news is from ol' Gerry Mander hisself, from a recent triumphant presentation in Alaska of How to Screw the Voters. Here's what will happen to the districts in which Goldstream and Ester lie, according to the News-Miner:

One notable shift at home: Ester, Fox and much of the Goldstream Valley would join a giant rural House district that includes scores of communities from across the state. It would straddle the Fairbanks area and stretch completely across Alaska — from the southwestern village of Holy Cross north to Arctic Village and southeast again to Chitina.:

Does this make sense at ALL? There was some of this before, too, almost as ridiculous: Coghill's district stretches from North Pole to Valdez.



Here's what Wikipedia says about gerrymandering:

In the process of setting electoral districts, rather than using uniform geographic standards, Gerrymandering is a practice of political corruption that attempts to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating geographic boundaries to create partisan, incumbent-protected, and neutral districts. The resulting district is known as a gerrymander.…

The two aims of gerrymandering are to maximize the effect of supporters' votes and to minimize the effect of opponents' votes. One strategy, packing, is to concentrate as many voters of one type into a single electoral district to reduce their influence in other districts. In some cases this may be done to obtain representation for a community of common interest, rather than to dilute that interest over several districts to a point of ineffectiveness. A second strategy, cracking, involves spreading out voters of a particular type among many districts in order to deny them a sufficiently large voting bloc in any particular district. The strategies are typically combined, creating a few "forfeit" seats for packed voters of one type in order to secure even greater representation for voters of another type.

Gerrymandering is effective because of the wasted vote effect. By packing opposition voters into districts they will already win (increasing excess votes for winners) and by cracking the remainder among districts where they are moved into the minority (increasing votes for eventual losers), the number of wasted votes among the opposition can be maximized. Similarly, with supporters holding narrow margins in the unpacked districts, the number of wasted votes among supporters is minimized.

While the wasted vote effect is strongest when a party wins by narrow margins across multiple districts, gerrymandering narrow margins can be risky when voters are less predictable. To minimize the risk of demographic or political shifts swinging a district to the opposition, politicians can instead create more packed districts, leading to more comfortable margins in unpacked ones.

There is a public hearing in Fairbanks April 19, Tuesday, 2 to 6 pm at the Fairbanks City Hall, City Council Chamber on the 2nd floor: If you would like to comment on the utter monstrosity of a jerrymandered redistricting, please come to this hearing! If you are in another city, other hearings are taking place also and you can find out more from the Alaska Redistricting Board's website. PLEASE NOTE that I have also heard that these hearings will end at 4 pm, not 6, so I don't know if they've been curtailed, expanded, or if this is just a rumor. Getting there early if you can will be important. I will be taking time off work to get there.

Interesting how they timed it for most people's working hours, hmm?

At any rate, you might consider whether it is equitable or reasonable for Ester's Senate district to include--and no, I am NOT kidding--Sitka, or for us to be in the same district as, say, Arctic Village. This won't help the Bush and it sure won't help Ester or Fairbanks or Goldstream (or Sitka or Holy Cross) to be properly represented. This is sheer stupidity. There are two official options, both of which are clearly attempts to split voting blocks, with no regard for whether the residents of these areas have any commonalities of need or location. This won't serve anybody well. There are a few privately-suggested plans, also shown on the Board's website. There are several organizations proposing options.

Financial finagling in food and sustainability

Week three of the Comparative Farming and Sustainable Food Systems class proceeded on in fascinating detail. We've been talking about sustainability and the design of food and farm systems. Sustainability can be thought of as the interactions of cultural, economic, social, institutional, and energy components in a system that have positive effects on the present, without compromising the future. The design of such a system has an end of healthy ecosystems and healthy communities, creating wellbeing for people and their environment in both the short and long term. Cultural are distinguished from social components in that the former have to do with identity (traditions, value systems, language), while the latter have to do institutions and systems of organization (political structure, systems of control and distribution).

One of the topics that came up during the course of discussion was the food price spikes we're seeing lately and the resultant riots around the world. The professor handed out an article on this from the January 15 New Zealand Herald:

The food riots began in Algeria more than a week ago, and they are going to spread. During the last global food shortage, in 2008, there was serious rioting in Mexico, Indonesia and Egypt. We may expect to see that again, only more widespread.

The article talks about poverty, climate change, world population, global consumption patterns, floods, drought, imports, local crop failures. Interestingly, it does not talk about commodity speculation in grains and other foodstuffs. I recalled a story written for Harper's Magazine by Frederick Kaufman about the food riots of 2008 and what led up to them: he specifically focused on the role of companies like Goldman Sachs and the issue of commodities futures in wheat and corn in the food crisis. The title says it succinctly: "The Food Bubble: How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it." (PDF)

Investors were delighted to see the value of their venture increase, but the rising price of breakfast, lunch, and dinner did not align with the interests of those of us who eat.

I did a little searching on the web and found the letter from Steve Strongin on behalf of Goldman Sachs in response to the article, Kaufman's reply to that, and an interview with Kaufman by Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now!

The economics of sustainability has to do with full costing: what's known as the triple bottom line or the related integrated bottom line. We talked about economy of scale (Mike Emers of Rosie Creek Farm is helping to teach the class, and he spoke about this): maximizing your inputs (money, equipment, time, labor, etc.) for the most efficient and best levels of use for what you have—a balancing of costs and benefits. Each size of operation has an economy of scale that best suits it. Craig Gerlach brought up "neighboring," a term I hadn't heard before. This is a practice where neighbor farmers will work in common to help each other. For example, community harvesting: farmers in a particular local showing up at one farm to help harvest that farmer's fields, then moving on to the next farm in a given area, and so on, until all of their fields are harvested. Bringing in the harvest is an old tradition, as is barn-raising. Farmers may also share equipment.

in a food system, how do the local, regional, and global food systems link and interact? How do the scales of agriculture affect diversity in ecology, society, culture? We talked about the size of a farm affecting its ecological diversity: monoculture tends to be the rule on the extremely large farm. Gerlach hastened to point out that the modern industrial standard of monoculture and resource exploitation could be replaced with a restorative system, using organic and rotational methods, on the very large as well as the small farm, and that diversification of crops can be done over time as well as land area.

"Nature is the model."

This led us to talking about the plains vs. the prairie, and the idea of place-based development of breeds and farming methods. Gerlach mentioned the work of Wes Jackson, who became concerned about erosion of topsoil in the US (famously in the Dust Bowl of the thirties, but still continuing), and ended up founding an organization called The Land Institute. Most grains we use are annuals; we till the land, sow the seed, harvest the crop, and then plow under the stubble. The institute describes the situation and their mission this way:

No method for perpetuating agricultural productivity exists. Our goal is to improve the security of our food and fiber source by reducing soil erosion, decreasing dependency upon petroleum and natural gas, and relieving the agriculture-related chemical contamination of our land and water. Our specific research is an innovation for agriculture, using "nature as the measure" to develop mixed perennial grain crops as food for humans where farmers use nature as a standard or measure in making their agronomic decisions. Over 75 percent of human calories worldwide come from grains such as wheat and corn, but the production of these grains erodes ecological capital. Our research is directed toward the goal of having conservation as a consequence of agricultural production.

The classic documentary, The Plow that Broke the Plains, brought the problem of tilling and erosion to public attention in 1936. The sound is pretty bad on this, but it's an interesting piece.



"A healthy, well-integrated community needs to be integrated with its food," said Gerlach, and I agree. That means the consequences of agricultural economics has to be connected to the consequences of agriculture. Food, economics, human happiness: you can't rip off one sector without hurting the others.

Previous posts in this series:

Food systems, policy, and foodsheds
Food systems and shizen
Sustainable food systems class

Cross posted at SNRAS Science & News.

TTY scam: Yorkies for Sale

Or perhaps it's English bulldogs, or terriers to give away. Sound familiar? It should: it's exactly the same scam as that run by those arseholes sending e-mails requesting ad placement. Same phrasing, and a curiously insistent person wanting to know when, exactly, the credit card will be run, and can it be run today, right now, in fact? I received one of these calls a couple of weeks ago, and it was so suspicious that the only thing I could think of was that the person on the TTY machine (also known as a TDD) had stolen somebody else's card. They gave me a name and residence address (Juneau, and I looked it up on Google--it appeared to be a local church). Took 45 minutes to get exactly nowhere.

Then Leah got another call yesterday. What a waste of time!

The scam may not be in the ad placement, but in the dog end (so to speak). Free or cheap dogs, but shipping that costs a lot and somehow the dogs never arrive.

I get requests for ads all the time, usually by e-mail, that reveal that the person placing them has no real interest in the periodical in which they are to be placed and no conception of English grammar. There are often mistakes in spelling and grammar, but not the kind a native speaker of English would make. They also clearly know nothing of the periodical they have contacted (for example, how often the Republic comes out!) The same is true of this new TTY version of the scam.

I'm not sure if it's a hearing shyster taking advantage of the TTY phone, a deaf shyster abusing a TTY phone, or a person posing as a TTY operator but who is in fact a scam artist. No matter the case, newspapers and magazines should watch out.

2009 in review

Once again it is that time of year: resolutions and reflections to gird oneself for adventure and mud-slogging for the days of the coming year. In some ways, this was a pretty rough year. So, here's how it looked last year:

January
The Stones' house caught fire.

A letter from Emmonak was published, and all hell broke loose. Sarah didn't notice, though.

I began my descent into ukulele madness, with the purchase of a brand-new baritone uke. Little did I know that this was the start of serious musical obsession. Woo-hoo!

Obama was sworn in to the presidency, and Service was Restored.

I received notice of my 30-year high school reunion. O gads.

February
Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir assumed the post of Iceland's prime minister. This is notable because she is Iceland's first female prime minister and she is openly lesbian.

The Fairbanks North Star Borough School Board decided that bullying on the basis of gender identity was every bit as nasty as discrimination or harrasment on some other basis.

Dave Lacey died of cancer.

March
The Republic's publisher and contributors and fans celebrated ten years of crazed publishing in a MAJOR party with live music (Back Cu'ntry Bruthers and the Slippin' Mickeys) and the Publisher's Picks.

I joined Facebook and set up a page for the Republic. Now it's become a major time drain…WAY too much fun.

I helped organize the first of a series of CSA roundtables at my university job. The group that has arisen from this, the Alaska Community Agriculture Association, gives me a little hope that Alaska may yet feed itself and with good, wholesome food.

I was invited to speak at the Alaska Press Club annual meeting as part of a panel of bloggers. It was quite entertaining, but I got stuck in Anchorage (flight cancellation on account of belching volcano). One of the big topics was Mike Doogan's outing of Mudflats, the resultant fracas, and whether it was appropriate for bloggers to be anonymous. Hans drove down to fetch me, o noble spouse that he is.

April
The Ester Republic got a new office! Photos here and here. Here too.

John Reeves decided to shake things up in Ester a bit with a nuclear power plant proposal. Ester may or may not be a nuke-free zone.

May
Lee Shauer, Dwight Deely, and Linda Patrick committed suicide, all in one week. Ester was reeling.

The Banana Girls Ukulele Marching Band started practicing for the 4th of July. I started taking strum classes with Jean McDermott.

June
The Ester Community Market began its second season.

Emma Creek West reared its ugly head again. Or rather, Land Management did, with an old, previously rejected development plan. They just don't get it.

July
The Ester Fourth of July parade was GREAT. And the Banana Girls were there.

Sarah Palin's resignation speech got edited by Vanity Fair. More hilarity I haven't had in a LONG time.

August
The Onion once again published prophecy, this time on how Congress works not to provide health care.

Our cat Archie died of throat cancer.

September
I found a great song to learn.

Adam and Kelly Hullin of Wasilla embarrassed themselves publicly in an interview in the Frontiersman. Sadly, they probably have no clue just how stupid they made themselves appear. Sigh. Another blow to the Alaskan reputation.

October
Marjorie Kowalski Cole, scheduled to be the first speaker for the Ester library lecture series, was unable to make it but sent in her talk in written form anyway.

Mike Musick ran for borough assembly again and won, but Luke Hopkins and Tammie Wilson had to go through a runoff.

November
I got serious about Facebook.

Monique Musick gave the first lecture for the John Trigg Ester Library, a slide show and talk on her trip to China in 2008.

December
Marjorie Kowalski Cole died of cancer. I sent her book of poetry to the printer.

Addendum 1/5/10: (I never did a 2008 in review post), 2007 in review, 2006 in review

Yes Men muzzled by my old ISP

Hurricane Electric used to provide hosting for my website. I've since been on another host, and it's a good thing. Hurricane Electric doesn't know that parody is protected speech. From the Yes Men:

US Chamber Shuts off TheYesMen.org and Websites of Hundreds of Other Activist Groups

Free Speech, Free Commerce Threatened by "Free Trade" Champion

Hundreds of activist organizations had their internet service turned off last night after the US Chamber of Commerce strong-armed an upstream provider, Hurricane Electric, to pull the plug on The Yes Men and May First / People Link, a 400-member-strong organization with a strong commitment to protecting free speech.

"This is a blow against free speech, and it demostrates in gory detail the full hypocrisy of the Chamber," said Andy Bichlbaum of The Yes Men. "The only freedom they care about is the economic freedom of large corporations to operate free of the hassles of science, reality, and democracy."

After suffering embarrassment at the hands of the Yes Men on Monday, the Chamber immediately threatened legal action, then followed through Thursday by sending a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice to Hurricane Electric Internet Services. In the DMCA notice, the Chamber claimed that the parody Chamber website operated by The Yes Men constituted copyright infringement, and demanded that the site be shut down immediately and that the creator's service be canceled.

But the Yes Men are not served directly by Hurricane Electric, but by May First / People Link. And when Hurricane Electric shut down the fake Chamber of Commerce site (now relocated), they also took down the websites of 400 other organizations.

May First / People Link fought back. They immediately "mirrored" the site, and then quickly negotiated with Hurricane Electric to restore service to their other members.

"The DMCA attacks the critically important right we have to effectively comment and criticize institutions and companies," said May First/People Link Co-Director Alfredo Lopez. "It's an undemocratic, backwards law, a perfect example of how the government shouldn't intrude on our lives. But the Chamber was perfectly happy to use it to stomp on the Yes Men's rights to free spech, and the rights of hundreds of other organizations to operate on the web."

The 400 May First / People Link members weren't the only victims of the Chamber's action on Thursday. Today is the start of the national release of the Yes Men's new film, The Yes Men Fix the World. The film is being released in a number of independent theaters - who, not being part of a chain, are heavily dependent on the Yes Men website for selling tickets to the film. The Chamber's actions thus impinge on the ability of these small businesses to turn a profit.

"The Chamber claims to represent 3 million businesses of every size, yet their actions undermined a fair number of small businesses," said Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men. "The Chamber is clearly much less interested in actual freedom, economic or otherwise, than in the license of their largest members to operate free from the scientific consensus." (The Chamber has opposed or refused to endorse a climate bill, the absurdity of which the Yes Men's Monday action was designed to highlight.)

This isn't the first time a Yes Men site has found itself targeted by a DMCA complaint brought by a large corporation. The Yes Men have in the past received DMCA notices from Exxon, Dow Chemical, DeBeers, and the New York Times. In each case, the the Yes Men (represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation) refused to comply, and prevailed. Even the George W. Bush campaign sent a complaint to try to interrupt service to GWBush.com, in 2000, resulting in extensive ridicule that culminated in Bush's mind-boggling gaffe that "There ought to be limits to freedom."

Given that I regularly run parody, satire, and even the occasional press release by the Yes Men, I have to say that I'm glad I am not hosted by Hurricane anymore, and after this, I recommend that anyone looking for an ISP avoid them like the plague.

You read it at the Frontiersman first

I laughed out loud when I read this. Talk about confused people! Here's the Frontiersman interviewing doofuses Adam and Kelly Hullin of Wasilla:

F: How do you respond to the criticism the president has had on race issues or that those who take him to task are racist?

A: I’d say that’s a cop-out. That’s ridiculous. He’s not even black. The fact that he’s black is a lie. He’s only 6 percent black. He’s actually 69 percent Muslim.

K: That’s just a way for them to get us to fight with one another. He’s really only 6 percent black.

Yep, you read that right. Apparently former religious affiliation is a racial attribute.

Hoo, boy.

Gibberish

This morning on the news I heard part of Sarah Palin's farewell address. It was gibberish. It was full of clichés, incomplete sentences, full of stereotypes of the military, of the media, of government, whiny excuses for why she did or didn't do X, Y, or Z. This transcript is somewhat cleaned up, but it's still a pretty bad speech.

It's all about patriotism, and the military, and driling, and hunting, and the free market, and evil Hollywood and evil government.

I promised that we would manage our fish and wildlife for abundance, and that we would defend the constitution, and we have, though outside special interest groups they still just don't get it on this one. Let me tell you, Alaskans really need to stick together on this with new leadership in this area especially, encouraging new leadership... got to stiffen your spine to do what's right for Alaska when the pressure mounts, because you're going to see anti-hunting, anti-second amendment circuses from Hollywood and here's how they do it. They use these delicate, tiny, very talented celebrity starlets, they use Alaska as a fundraising tool for their anti-second amendment causes. Stand strong, and remind them patriots will protect our guaranteed, individual right to bear arms, and by the way, Hollywood needs to know, we eat, therefore we hunt.

Good god. What a load of pap.

The thing about this is that what she's talking about is in fact important, but she debases all of it: good government, responsible journalism, military service, energy independence, political responsibility, public service, environmental stewardship, subsistence living.

What a maroon.

Why the post office has such a miserable reputation

With apologies to the many postal workers I know who do a great job, today I encountered a frustrating example of idiocy in the post office. Three returned copies of Agroborealis, addressed to people in Cuba, bore this stamped notice:

"Return to sender for correction. Country name must be in English on last line of address and not abbreviated."

Hmm. So "Cuba" in Spanish, on the last line of the address, must be written in English, like this: "Cuba." Right. The way it was actually written. And apparently it can't be abbreviated as "Cuba." It's got to be "Republic of Cuba."

Like they can't tell "Cuba" from some other country? Sheesh. They certainly seem to be able to tell that "China" means "People's Republic of China" with no trouble, judging from the lack of returns from Asia. Maybe Cuba's a special case, providing particular literary challenges to the foreign-mail sorting machines and/or workers.

Thus confirming my suspicion that the people handling foreign-bound mail can't read, or at least, not very well.

Sex with Ducks

The California Supreme Court, if you haven't noticed, has decided that unequal treatment under the law and oppression of a minority by the majority are just ducky. So to speak.

This musical commentary and video by Garfunkel and Oates puts this stupid attitude in the right perspective. Not sure how to embed it, but believe me, it's worth a look-see.

Hat tip to Monique Musick!

Senator Baucus: bought and paid for?

Well, this is one possible answer to my question on why, if Senator Baucus thinks we have such a terrible health care crisis in this country, he isn't (as chair of the hearings) allowing single-payer advocates a seat at the table:

One of the Baucus 13, Kevin Zeese, recently summarized Baucus’ career campaign contributions:

“From the insurance industry: $1,170,313;
health professionals: $1,016,276;
pharmaceuticals/health-products industry: $734,605;
hospitals/nursing homes: $541,891;
health services/HMOs: $439,700.”

In other words: his campaigns have been financed by the for-profit health industry.

Interesting, wouldn't you say?

Let's just take a look at WHY single-payer reduces expenses so dramatically. Here's the United States' system as it currently stands:



Rather messy, no? Convoluted, even.

And here's Canada's single-payer system:



Much simpler. It's the complexity of the US system that breeds an expensive wastefulness, and the profit motive that creates an incentive to whittle away people's coverage and endurance through (again wasteful) quantities of paperwork, etc.

These graphic representations of health care systems are from Neil Davis' book, Mired in the Health Care Morass, which I published last year. Reading that book made it very very clear just why Congress' and the White House's approach on this is so wrong-headed, and doomed to failure--from a health care standpoint. It will work beautifully from an investor's profit-making standpoint, so long as you don't care that people will be dying and sickly and going broke as a result.

Reeves wants to do WHAT!?, or, nuclear power for Ester

Oh good god.

Found this first on Fairbanks Open Radio, and now in an article by Dermot Cole in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: John Reeves has applied for a permit to install a portable nuclear power plant on a 4-acre lot near Ester. He makes the following nonsensical claims: that nuclear energy is the "cleanest, safest, cheapest form of energy available" (um, yeah, when it's 93 million miles away).

Before I get into the details of this, here's the date for the public hearing on the permitting:

Tuesday, May 19, 7 pm, FNSB Planning Commission. You can e-mail the entire commission at planning@co.fairbanks.ak.us.

Hyperion Power Generation, the company Reeves would like to work with, is creating small, self-contained modular power plants, rather like the Toshiba company's proposed modular power plant for Galena. (As of last year, this power plant was still scheduled for permitting approval with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.)

Hyperion's modules are smaller than Toshiba's by quite a bit (only about two meters cubed) and use no weapons-grade material. Here's how the Guardian describes them:

The reactors, only a few metres in diameter, will be delivered on the back of a lorry to be buried underground. They must be refuelled every 7 to 10 years. Because the reactor is based on a 50-year-old design that has proved safe for students to use, few countries are expected to object to plants on their territory.

Let's see: "clean".

The biggest problem with nuclear power is the waste, both mining waste and power industry waste. The Star (Toronto) describes the problem succinctly:

The fact is the units would still produce nuclear-fuel waste – a football-sized amount for each reactor – and while it would be collected by Hyperion and managed at a central location, a large part of the population believes it immoral to create and leave behind highly toxic waste for future generations.

Can a company like Hyperion be trusted to transport, collect and manage this waste from potentially thousands of sites?

And will Hyperion be around for thousands of years to look after its mess? Will the governments of the countries in which these potential sites are to be located be stable enough to properly regulate the nuclear industry and plants within their borders, again, for thousands of years?

To claim that they are "greenhouse gas-emission free" is nonsensical, just as it is for anything these days. Transporting the module back and forth every 7 to 10 years is going to require something in the way of fuel, and there is no industrial equipment manufactured today that doesn't rely on fossil fuels somewhere in its creation. Mining uranium, of course, has its own set of problems above and beyond greenhouse gas emissions (the uranium mining industry has a lousy health and safety record).

Side note to Alaska's political bloggers: any of you recall the Elim student protest and Palin's mining plans for the Seward Peninsula? The student blog doesn't appear to have been updated since September 2007, but there's some more news items that showed up in 2008. Northwest Alaska isn't he only place that needs to be thinking about this question, though: Bokan Mountain near Ketchikan is described as Ucore Uranium's "flagship property".

[I really don't get why Palin is so pro-mining and so unfriendly toward renewable industries like fishing (which bring in more money than mining!).]

"Safest":

I'm not sure what these companies think they are doing, trying to sell nuclear power plants to people in a state riddled with fault lines and volcanoes and flooding rivers. I read a ludicrous claim somewhere (can't find it now...) that because an item is buried, it would be safe from earthquake. Um, what? the earth moves, and not just on the surface—down for miles! And radioactive material, if it gets loose, is decidedly unsafe. In any quanitity.

There are a couple of big advantages that these small modular-type power generators have over the traditional sort of nuclear power plant. One of them is no mechanical systems: no moving parts, nothing to break down and cause havoc thereby. The other is that the expense in building and maintaining them is considerably less than with a big plant. The uranium hydride used as fuel is far less nasty than the fuel typically used in nuclear power plants. And it's not going to be useful for people intending to make their own nuclear weapons.

Now let's address "cheapest."

Typical large-scale nuclear power has been heavily subsidized. There's no way it could compete with oil, coal, wind. solar, geothermal--any other method. It's the most expensive form of power generation out there, excepting maybe using a gadzillion mice on excercise wheels...and most estimates of cost never even touch the expense of guarding the waste properly from 260,000 years...mostly because the plan is to bury it in the ground and forget about it. The mini-nuke option is cheaper, by a lot, but it still doesn't address this long-term problem and expense.

I'm wondering. The borough didn't have any zoning plans for wireless phone transmitter towers, so they popped up all over and caused a fuss. I'm betting they don't have any zoning in place regarding nuclear power plants, either.

The fundraiser phenomenon

This year, I've noticed far more fundraisers to pay medical expenses than ever before. Three fundraisers for kids with cancer (no insurance or not enough) right around the beginning of March. Then a couple more. The latest one is for Evan Phillips of the Whipsaws, who is having surgery for an old injury that damaged his hip years ago and lately has been causing him so much pain that he couldn't participate in the planned tour this winter of Tim Easton, Leeroy Stagger, and him.

So now there's a fundraiser in Anchorage, featuring all kinds of musical types. He travels in musical circles, and has friends who are great at graphic design and publicity, so he's likely to be able to raise enough to pay a good bit of the bill.

Doesn't something strike you as horribly wrong with this picture?

While Obama and the Democrats in Congress are moving together on supposed health care "reform," the Republicans are plotting To-Hell-With-The-People obstructionism. But that obstructionism may just save the public's bacon--all the Democrats seem to be talking about is health insurance. Story after story talks about "coverage", "benefits packages," and "insurance". THIS ISN'T HEALTH CARE, you BOZOS!

The REAL health care reform proposal, HR 676, sponsored by John Conyers, is barely mentioned, even in articles that propose things like an expansion of Medicare. Hell, Conyers barely got into the roundtable Obama held earlier this year on the subject of health care reform, and it was only after an e-mail barrage and deluge of protests that they let him in the doors.

So Congress is talking about health insurance and Obama is talking about providing "health insurance to every American that they can afford and that provides them high quality." That's still not the same thing as health care, Mr. President, and I think your route is a mistake.

In the meantime, sick people get to rely on the charity of their friends. Again and again, until their friends and neighbors are tapped out.

What a stupid way to run a country.

All Fools up here in Alaska

Hoo, boy what a hilarious week we've had. Just when I thought Alaska politics couldn't get any more ridiculous, BAM!

• Wayne Anthony Ross gets appointed as attorney general not because he's good at law, but because he's got an agenda! From the Gov's own press release:

As Attorney General, Ross will work with the governor on issues surrounding development of Alaska’s rich natural resources as the state continues its efforts to provide energy security for America and lower energy costs for Alaskans. As Attorney General, Ross also will help the governor protect Alaskans’ right to bear arms, and he will work tirelessly to manage Alaska’s fish and game resources for abundance through science and not politics.

• Recently-Republican Democrat Grussendorf gets chosen (by Sarah), then rejected (by the legislature)
• Mike Doogan makes an idiotic move and unveils a pseudonymous political blogger's real name
• a volcano goes off and Chevron decides to follow Exxon's wise example and leave 6 million gallons of oil in tanks on the side of said volcano--with no response plan ready! More here.
• Three years after the fact, the state sues BP for some oil spills and back royalties.
• Ted gets off scot-free because the prosecution screwed up their big case with a capital S

Sheesh. Can it get any worse?

Hah. Better not bet against it--in this state, it can always get worse...

The pertinent point

As Progressive Alaska and others have pointed out, Mike Doogan was wrong to out Mudflats. As Mudflats herself says,

The big picture, the thing that should outrage all of us, despite political party or affiliation, is this: an elected official in a position of power and authority utilized state resources to deliberately and with malice, knowing there would be negative consequences, impinged on the free speech and privacy rights of a private citizen.

What matters is not which team is in office, what matters is how they play the game. And Doogan is not playing fair, or with rectitude. This was sleazy.

The Threat Level is Orange

Hans is driving down from Fairbanks to fetch me; he called this morning from Cantwell, where there was an extraordinary amount of background noise. Normally when we go through Cantwell on our way to and from the Alaska Press Club conference, we gas up at Cantwell, and it's dead quiet. (There was one exception, when a blizzard had created near-whiteout conditions. That was the time we got mooned by some impatient immortals.) This year, however, there's apparently some sort of snowmachine happening, and the place that Hans called from had all kinds of laughter and conversation and bustle in the background.

There's a peek of sunshine coming through, which dovetails with the weather prediction last night, that the wind would shift for a while in the late morning and then come back straight from the volcano to Anchorage. However, my flight isn't scheduled until something like 1 pm, by which time who knows what will happen. I still haven't been able to get through to the airport to take a flight credit/change, whathaveyou. I've been using my boarding pass from yesterday as a bookmark. Keeps it functional.

Had a great but extremely pricey dinner at the Corsair restaurant last night, in the basement of this building. It was odd, eating alone, just sitting there listening to the background music, being annoyed by a loud-voiced woman at a nearby table who kept up a stream of incredibly vacuous commentary on her dogs. The dogs sounded ill-trained, and the woman hardly let anybody else get a word in edgewise. It made me think about the kinds of conversations I have at dinner or in public places. I can see trading entertaining dog stories, but really, how long can one carry on a monologue about the dog running around the neighbors' yard and getting the dogcatcher called on them? Not really very witty anecdotes, and more repetition and just plain dullness than I thought was possible in real life. It was like a long, drawn-out,not very funny low-budget sitcom performed by a very bad actress off stage.

The conversations I hear in the Eagle there's all sorts of interesting topics and thoughtful discussion, witty jokes, anecdotes of reasonable complexity or pertinence. Politics, religion, science, construction, music, poetry, books, dance, body language, social interaction....I mean, even when the people I know talk about dogs, they at least have something sensible to say. This was just DULL. Still, I probably missed parts of the conversation, because the people who were with her seemed to have quieter voices, but still. For those of us forced to eavesdrop because of the sheer volume of a voice in a restaurant, it would be nice to listen to something intelligent. If somebody was talking like this in the Eagle, everyone would get up and move away from the speaker, or they'd be cut off because they would obviously have descended past the point of higher brain functionality and be unable to drive themselves home.

Ah, yes. Orange. The color of interminable waiting, of dull conversation, of travelers' disappointment and annoyance, of excruiciatingly stupid television programming. Of petty security bureaucracy.

I have to say, however, that the Era Aviation people have been pretty helpful through all this repeated attempts to get out of town. And the coffee cafe ladies were great.

Anonymity, the Press Club, and real stupidity

One of the subjects that came up last night on the blogging panel was whether bloggers (read: the subset of bloggers that tend to be political commentators with a journalistic/observational bent) should remain/be allowed to remain anonymous. Shannyn Moore and I both agreed (us on the left of the podium) that yes, of course, anonymity is the perogative of the individual blogger. Andrew Halcro also agreed, with the observation on a standard true-name byline, "How could you enforce it, anyway?"

Well, as Mike Doogan has, as of this morning, demonstrated, one way to enforce it is by the method of forced outing. Doogan revealed the actual name of a popular blogger, Mudflats. (He used, rumor has it, an e-list of constituents to spread this word, which may constitute a conflict of interest. More on this later.)

This immediately brings to mind the outings of closeted gay public figures; the ethics of this has always been troubling to me. On the one hand, outing someone who can't yet deal with this innermost conflict in their identity is, to me, a form of violence perpetrated on the outee. On the other hand, the outee may in fact be a perpetrator of, say, legislative violence upon fellow gays who are honestly out, taking that risk that the closeted can't bear to face.

However, Mudflats is simply an individual commenting on politics. The refuge of the pseudonym in literature and journalism has a time-honored history. I think it is Doogan here who is in the wrong. He has overstepped his bounds.

I'll have to get off line here for the moment. The hotel needs to do some maintenance.

Public testimony and a poll on the death penalty

There's an informal poll on KTVA.com on the death penalty bill. So far it's 56 percent against, but of course these things change like mad.

Alaskans Against the Death Penalty has a bunch more information on the hearings for HB 9. Jay Ramras, it turns out, is a co-sponsor. Well, I may appreciate his concern for agriculture in the Bush and villages suffering from hunger and lack of fuel, but I think his judgement is WAY off on this one. This is wrong, Jay.

Vengeance is mine, sayeth Chenault

Ah, yes, in commemoration of our 50th year as a state, Representative Mike Chenault wants to introduce the death penalty to Alaska. As if we didn't have enough stupidity and expense in gummint these days. (Actually, I'm not that generally displeased with Alaska government, but boy, howdy, certain Republicans sure seem to want to muck things up but good.) Sarah Palin, good little bloodthirsty Christian that she is, shares Chenault's absolute faith in the impeccable, color-blind, and utterly error-free operation of our criminal justice system. Ramras evidently also has no qualms about it, either: "Hang 'em high." Or, if they don't think the system is perfect, they're still perfectly willing to sacrifice one or two here and there, or not worry about the disproportionate application of the death penalty depending on the convicted person's race, or the expense before the person even gets to trial.

And to top it off, Chenault is just fine with wasting the legislature's limited time:

It is not my expectation that HB 9 will pass the Legislature and become law this year. In fact, I would be quite surprised if it did.

Nope, Chenault wants us to have a "healthy dialogue" about it. I submit that perhaps the 90-day session is not the best place to do this.

Talk about stupid.

More on pollock, trawling, salmon, and money

John Enge recently posted a column on Alaska Report, "Science vs. Barons of the Fish Business:"

It is apparent that the two trawl fisheries mentioned above [Neah Bay, Washington, and the Bering Sea] are not conducive to family fishermen, subsistence and sport users, the many other species of fish in the ocean, or the coastal communities. The problem is that these giant factory trawlers, and many independent trawlers fishing for shore plants with 'legal rights to process a certain % of the total catch,' don't mind snuffing out all other species of sea life. The big fishery in the Bering Sea is the pollock fishery, prosecuted by mid-water trawlers. That would seem to be a safe way to fish. Just scoop up the schools of pollock, leaving plenty behind for replenishment of the stocks. (Except that half the pollock fishery is right before propogation and the pollock never get to sow the seeds of the next generation.)

…Many times, the electronics are indicating the wrong kind of fish; fish that they are not permitted by law to keep. So down goes the nets and up comes millions of pounds of squid, king salmon, chum salmon, halibut, herring and anything else that lives in proximity to the pollock. It's not like they all live in separate apartments. You clean out one apartment and you get a mixed bag of occupants. Remember, the trawl nets are like pulling a football field-sized sieve sideways through the water, with everything in that amount of space for miles squeezed into a 'sock' on the end of the net. (I won't even go into bottom trawling where Oregon State University researchers found that it extinguishes 30% of the species complex where they have been.)

According to the Marine Stewardship Council, the Alaska pollock fishery is seeking recertification as a sustainable fishery. There is a lot of money in pollock, especially in sustainably fished pollock, and some serious drivers in the purchasing end of the business. For example, McDonald's:

McDonald's purchases more than 18,000 metric tons, or 43.2 million pounds, of fish a year for its popular Filet-O-Fish sandwiches. Filet-O-Fish is made with pollock, a whitefish that lives in the cold waters off the coasts of Alaska and eastern Russia. The Marine Stewardship Council has certified U.S. Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands and the Gulf of Alaska pollock fisheries as models for sustainable fisheries management, but many retailers and foodservice operators still use whitefish from other fisheries that are less sustainable and traceable.

McDonald's is very interested in obtaining fish from sustainable sources, providing an economic incentive for fisheries to obtain certification of sustainability. But is that level of sustainability certified by the MSC sufficiently sustainable? or is it just better than no certification at all? or, as Thomas Royer asks, is it really only a myth?

Fisheries are generally classified as a sustainable resource on the assumption that they can be maintained for future generations. However, studies have demonstrated man's ability to deplete major fisheries since the Middle Ages.

A recent book, "The Unnatural History of the Sea" by Callum Roberts, traces the destruction of fish populations from the estuaries of England after 1000 AD to the most recent demise of orange roughy off New Zealand. It has been estimated that 90 percent of large fish have now been depleted.

Will the Bering Sea pollock fishery continue to decline? Is it already too late?

An Anchorage Daily News article last summer points to the decline in the pollock fishery, which certainly doesn't sound like it's very sustainable. One interesting thing that Callum brings up, and that is discussed at the Progressive Policy Institute, is that of subsidies "to help keep catch levels up." These subsidies to build boats were in vogue until around 2004. There is a whole blog on the subject, in fact. Among the interesting recent posts are:

• WTO beaten by the Marine Stewardship Council
• US: fisheries subsidies and advice to President Obama on fisheries policy
• US: $170 million subsidies for commercial fishers of salmon in the West Coast
• USA: fisheries subsidies and WTO Trade Policy Review
• The pain of high fuel prices: US Senators introduce a bill proposing fuel subsidies for fishermen

Sustainability codes, of course, are only as good as their policy—and compliance.