(mostly) Northern roundup

Kyle Hopkins kicks ASS! Just heard him interviewed on NPR about an Alaska politics article he wrote for the ADN, and I was both thrilled to hear about someone I had lost touch with, and relieved that so sharp a wit is covering the important Stevens-Begich Senate race closely.

Begin obligatory election response: pretty weird that the three most hotly contested (or at least most drawn-out) Senate races were the three states I was most interested in: AK (see above), MN, OR. End obligatory election response.

I’m just starting Rashid Khalidi’s book Resurrecting Empire, which doesn’t seem designed to flagellate liberal guilt so much as actually educate a willing audience about colonialist history from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Indian subcontinent. A good book, and I liked it even more when I found out that he’s almost as dangerous as Bill Ayers.

National Geographic has a ten-page cover article on light pollution out this month, and we happily have our first clear night in about two weeks (not that that’s a record or anything–Alicia tells me that she remembers Kodiak going for something like sixty straight days of rain once, and nobody was talking about records being broken) Still, though, it is crisp and cool tonight. Jupiter looked bright until I saw Venus, and Manaiakalani is setting in the west as Ke ka o ka Makali`i is rising in the east. Even though I know something about how bad light pollution really is, I am reassured that I showed my nephew the same two planets and some of the same stars from the East River about a month ago.

It’s an East Coast-West Coast thing, pt 1

Once again, I find that when I settle in to my life, finding few things worth blogging about, I am unsuited to change pace when I do bump into something blogworthy. Also, since I haven’t had an iPhone implanted directly into my brain yet, I still need to be near a computer with internet access for long enough to type a post. Tricky.

Anyway, on Wednesday I got to see both the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific in a single day. While transcontinental flights are now so common that almost no one bothers to call them transcontinental anymore, I still think it is pretty cool. At the end of our trip to New York we took off from JFK which, like most other infrastructure in New York City, seems to be much too big, old, and held together by a combination of rust and duct tape to actually survive the traffic it handles. The flight landed at Long Beach, CA, and its airport provided a stark contrast in that regard.

Offer not avaliable in Alaska

With what I think many readers will agree is a barely believable level of Alaska buzz in the news these days (missing, unfortunately, some of the most important stories) I just thought I’d toss out a couple of observations and links to Alaska sources, not least of all to show some kind of sympathy to all the national beat reporters currently stuck in Wasilla.

If news about the Permanent Fund Dividend hasn’t gone national yet, it will soon (sorry, Brandee) as it was disbursed late last week. For those unfamiliar with this quaint custom, it refers to a check qualified residents of the state of Alaska get each year. Kind of a reverse income tax. Let me hasten to say that you shouldn’t pack your bags and your parka immediately. First of all, do the simple math that the more people who move there, the smaller the PFD gets. Also, you may not live in Alaska unless you can come to terms with the fact that, at any moment, you may be forced to wear bunny boots. Seriously.

Volcano, voting, vision

Title of this post notwithstanding, I still prefer Dewey Decimal.

The 21 July eruption on Kilauea is still going strong, though I haven’t been anywhere I can see it recently. So far, looks like a fairly small amount of lava has been erupted, and it isn’t headed toward my house.

Meanwhile, an encroaching hazard of another kind is receiving somewhat less media attention. Election reform and in particular electronic voting machine oversight seem to be low on the list for discussion, compared with number of dollars raised by candidates.

As I prepare for a talk at work tomorrow night on the history & philosophy of science (I think I hear the yawns starting already), I ran across an outstanding optical illusion on APOD a couple weeks back. As they say, it is a good example of how good we think our perceptions are contrasted with how good they actually are. Or perhaps something deeper, say Benjamin Cohen’s example of teaching his engineering students about what we can perceive and what we can’t.

Kind of reminds me of a poem by Stephen Crane.

It’s not just the candidates who are wacky

Via Layla, an old friend from Fairbanks, the best campaign sign ever. She punctuated the title as a question, but I think a simple declarative is more appropriate. Living in Alaska can reset your normalcy-meter to all sorts of things that are actually tremendously wierd. And still, nobody believes the truth about the place when you tell them.

This is important

I just sent emails to both Senators from Hawai`i about the torture bill, encouraging a filibuster. Here’s the link to contact information for all the Senators. Phone numbers and emails.

I don’t know much about legislative strategy, including whether this is the best move or not, but it seems too important to miss a chance.

Here’s my basic text:
I support a filibuster of the torture bill being voted on today. I believe the bill is morally, legally, and strategically reprehensible.

Were the Greeks in black and white, too?

Last night, thanks to the Communications Honor Society at UHH, I finally got to see Good Night and Good Luck and it was creepy how good a job they did in making the dialogue fit two paranoid eras. The Eisenhower clip about habeas corpus was especially timely on this very day.

As a closer, we introduced several friends to Keith Olbermann’s special comment on 9/11. I strongly encourage you to watch these powerful 9 minutes.

The discussion in the car on the way home revolved around whether the movie’s missing elements were complexity of story (me) or just the usual Hollywood melodrama (Elle). Ultimately, I bowed to the superior intellect, though perhaps some more historical context would have been good for those like myself who have a less-than-complete knowledge of McCarthyism.

And just in case the remarks about media “used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us,” are tempting to apply narrowly, see how rhetoric is used to single out the US by Newsweek covers for their different distribution regions on Think Progress.

At any rate, to prove that doublespeak and abuse of language for political purposes are older even than George Orwell, this post about Thucydides via Crooked Timber illustrates the historical foundations of such rhetoric as we see right now from lots of government hacks.

In lieu of a yard sign

I’ve been meaning to post for a while about the upcoming election, and while Hawai`i politics is not as exciting as Alaska, it’s still interesting. While I am not in danger of becoming a political blogger (for which I’m sure there is an even more awkward backronym) I do want to extend my efforts to help Brian Schatz, a Democrat running for the 2nd Congressional District in Hawai`i.

In fact, we have been sign waving and canvassing for Brian already, but since more people read this than drive by my house–it helps that we live on a back road–I’ll just say that I think Brian is the best person to represent Hawai`i in the U.S. House of Representatives. He’s smart, honest, and the thing which I respect most, willing to expose himself to the slings and arrows of an open discussion with voters. While the setting in which I saw him do so was a small gathering, that does not mean that all the questions were gimmes nor all the questioners soft and benevolent. But Brian showed no sign of relying on “ten words,” or any other campaign devices designed to evoke obedience.

Anyway, according to Al Hulsen, Hawai`i voter turnout has been the lowest in the country for some time. That is the kind of statistic that feels like a presage to a sickening lurch from “we don’t need to do anything,” to “we can’t do anything,” and we’ve had enough of that already.

From
Sent Thursday, August 24, 2006 10:22 pm
To
Cc
Subject Brian Schatz’s Big Island Campaign

Hello!

The primary election is less than a month away! Brian Schatz’s 2nd District Congressional campaign is building more momentum by the day and we need to step it up as much as we can to push through the primary election. Absentee voting has already started and there have been in excess of 200 ballots already cast. In addition, there has been a 4% increase in registered voters since the last election and with the Senatorial primary there will be a record amount of people out to vote. The 2nd district congressional race is a packed field with 10 democrats seeking to prevail in the primary, because of this the actual number of votes need to win will be much smaller than in other elections, but even more obtainable. Every single vote counts in this primary election, it could be won with as little as 15% of the vote. This primary race will be extremely close and it is so important that we continue with our grass roots efforts. I have been hearing more and more that this race can be won with the Big Island and I do not doubt that for a second.

Below is our initial schedule starting next week for Hilo, I will be adding more as we go along and we will be working on one for Kona & Waimea as well, but please contact me if you want to take the initiative and add other times or take signs out to put in yards. The police are cracking down on signwaving rules, so I am looking into what is legal to do on the Panaewa stretch, the list below will stay the same, but other things will be added as well. Please email me if you can help with the fair booth or the grand rally and I will forward more information on these events too.

Thank you all for your support and please contact me if you have ideas or suggestions about anything or if there are events you are aware of that Brian should attend,

Leah

Tuesday, 8/29: Signwaving bayfront 4p.
Friday, 9/1: Signwaving bayfront 4p.
Saturday, 9/2: Canvass, Puna/Makuu Market
Tuesday, 9/5: Signwaving bayfront 4p.
Friday, 9/8: Signwaving bayfront 4p.
Saturday, 9/9: Canvass, upper Kaumana
Tuesday, 9/12: Signwaving bayfront 4p.
Thursday 9/14-Sunday 9/17: County Fair
Friday, 9/15: Signwaving bayfront 4p.
Monday, 9/18: Signwaving 4p.
Tuesday, 9/19: Signwaving 4p.
Thursday, 9/21: Signwaving 4p
Friday, 9/22: MASS SIGNWAVING Bayfront 3:30p
Grand Rally @ Mooheau Bandstand, 5p.
Saturday, 9/23: Precinct signwaving

www.schatzforcongress.com