April 8, 2006 - Saturday

Prolific web guy Ryan Ozawa had this comment yesterday afternoon:

I love the new theme for the contextual Google Ads on your page:

Bacteria Lab
Urinary Infection
Bacteria Testing
Mad Cow Disease
Flesh Eating Disease

I'm almost curious enough to click and find out just what sort of business pays for people who'd click on a "Flesh Eating Disease" link... but only almost.

Another reader responded directly to yesterday's entry:

In response to the reader who wrote the following:

"I'm sure lots of your readers will do this; I don't know why a newspaper reporter can't do it. I typed in "Vibrio vulnificus" to Google and got the following as the excerpt from the very top entry, (a CDC site) ... Why couldn't this have been in the newspaper articles? Does anyone still wonder why newspaper readership is declining?"

Ummm... at least one newspaper reporter did the research. It WAS in his article. Did your reader bother to read the daily papers' stories about this himself/herself? Did you?

>From yesterday's Star-Bulletin story by Rod Antone and Mary Vorsino:

"Dr. Francis Pien, who recently retired as Straub Clinic & Hospital's chief of infectious diseases, also said that the bacteria found in Oliver Johnson's body -- vibrio vulnificus -- is uncommon in the islands.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, vibrio vulnificus is a bacterium that normally lives in warm sea water.

In rare cases, usually among those with low immune systems, the bacteria infect the bloodstream and cause fever, chills, septic shock and blistering skin lesions. It can also cause infection of the skin when open wounds are exposed to sea water, leading to "skin breakdown and ulceration," the CDC said."

Another interesting factoid emerges from a quick Google search for "flesh eating"...it's happening all over. Washington State: "One week after he first felt ill, Edward Kopfman became the ninth person to die in King County so far this year from flesh-eating bacteria...." Kentucky: "A second woman from Johnson County has died from a rare flesh-eating disease." New Brunswick, Canada: "Miramichi hospital officials have confirmed that a patient died of flesh-eating disease earlier this week." North Carolina: DUNN, N.C. - North Carolina health officials are investigating the death of a woman who died last week of a flesh-eating bacteria three days after accidentally jamming her hand in a wheelchair while working at a nursing home.

What all this suggests is that swimming in millions of gallons of raw sewage is but one way to feed those flesh eating bacteria.

And for weekend reading, here's a cheat sheet that provides an overview of the political scene, dubbed the "Grand Ole Docket".

And so it goes. Happy Saturday.

April 7, 2006 - Friday

The sun returned this week after a much noticed absence of many weeks. And sunrise got a lot earlier while it was hidden behind all those clouds. The sun will rise today at 6:19 a.m., meaning we have to rush to get out in time to see it come up.

Regarding reporting on the unfortunate fall into the Ala Wai, a reader notes:

I'm sure lots of your readers will do this; I don't know why a newspaper reporter can't do it. I typed in "Vibrio vulnificus" to Google and got the following as the excerpt from the very top entry, (a CDC site):

"Can cause disease in those who eat contaminated seafood or have an open wound that is exposed to seawater" (emphasis mine).

I didn't even have to link to the article to see this -- it was right there in the two-line Google excerpt. (I confess I happened to know from my work on the Natatorium issues that vibrio is associated with seawater.) That's not to say that it is necessarily from sewage-contaminated seawater, just seawater. But adding "sewage" to the search produced the interesting fact that five people died from Vibrio vulnificus infections from sewage-tainted water in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina flooding.

Why couldn't this have been in the newspaper articles? Does anyone still wonder why newspaper readership is declining? 

And another reader was quick to notice that House rules were waived yesterday in order to breath new life into the bid for $50 million in tax credits for a new racetrack.

Enjoyed your recent posting about the past politics of this thing. Heard Sen. Hanabusa on the radio this morning (Thursday) saying the tax credit bill was dead unless the Legislature waived the rule for hearing notices. Low and behold, House Finance waived the rule, giving less than 2 hours notice ofthe hearing. The politics go on.

Derrick DePledge has a has a story in this morning's Advertiser on the waiver and the hearing before the House Finance Committee.

I rounded up several more additons from the archives of the racetrack saga. I was able to find two interesting 1995 Star-Bulletin stories. The first reports on federal audit findings that recommended the state be required to repay the millions diverted from airport use to the racetrack purchase, a recommendation that led to the property's transfer back to Campbell Estate. The second story takes another look at the background of the state's racetrack deal based on documents disclosed in a lawsuit over a related parcel of land.

I also discovered in my files notes from the daily log of the racing school at Hawaii Raceway Park indicating the days and times when then-Gov. John Waihee was at the track and the names of those signing in at the same time. Evidence, one presumes, of the political pressure favoring cutting a deal of special benefit to the racetrack's operators.

April 6, 2006 - Thursday

Asleep at the desk? The Honolulu Police Department's main web site, www.honolulupd.org, now displays an unrelated page with this error message: "This domain name expired on 03/31/2006 and is pending renewal or deletion." Hello? Hello?

Those "flesh-eating disease" headlines are definitely attention grabbers. But is the man who fell into the water at the Ala Wai boat harbor really the victim of a flesh-eating bacteria?

Following a press conference at the Department of Health yesterday, confusion is still apparent in conflicting stories.

According to KITV (emphasis added):

Man Has Three Infections After Fall Into Contaminated Water
Health Workers Say Patient Doesn't Have Flesh-Eating Bacteria

POSTED: 10:46 pm HST April 5, 2006

HONOLULU -- A 34-year-old man who is critically ill after contracting several serious infections does not appear to have the flesh-eating bacteria, according to family members.

But this morning's Honolulu Advertiser has a very different take:

Spill may have led to critical sickness

Experts say a massive sewage spill could have combined with brackish conditions in the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor to create a bloom of virulent bacteria that has Oliver Johnson fighting a flesh-eating infection.

Yesteday's headline in the Star-Bulletin was very direct: "34-year-old mortgage loan officer Oliver Johnson has flesh-eating disease".

But the "flesh-eating" description doesn't even appear in today's Star-Bulletin follow-up, either to confirm or correct yesterday's report.

Today's S-B headline: "Source of grisly infection not clear, An Ala Wai plunge surely did not help, disease experts say".

Of the various somewhat conflicting reports, the Advertiser's is most precise, complete with summary descriptions of three bacteria found in the infections.

"Two bacteria — Vibrio vulnificus and aeromonas identified in Johnson's wounds, according to the Health Department — are potentially deadly, and both can cause a flesh-eating effect."

What's most suprising is that while the Waikiki sewage spill got lots of mainland attention, as of this morning Google News doesn't show any mainland coverage of this latest "flesh-eating" episode, which would further complicate the already difficult marketing job facing Hawaii's visitor industry.

April 5, 2006 - Wednesday

Former Star-Bulletin colleague Kekoa Catherine Enomoto, who now writes for the Maui News, tracked down all the surviving members of the original group of nine who participated in the first protest landing on Kahoolawe back in 1976. Her retrospective on the event 30 years ago ran in yesterday's Maui News, and included a couple of my photos.

I enjoyed the story in Monday's Advertiser by Derrick DePledge on the debate over a proposed $50 million in tax credits that would be used to back creation of a race track in Leeward Oahu. Lots of behind the scenes politics are working on this measure.

History lesson: It's important to recall that this is an issue that's been around for at least 15 years and surrounded by controversy and politics for that entire time. Before spending $50 million on the fantasy of an international racing center in Hawaii, it's useful to get at least a little historical perspective.

I did a quick run through my files yesterday and came up with a few things. There's a June 1993 story about the interesting sleight of hand that resulted in the lease of the site where Hawaii Raceway Park has been located. It was a deal involving $100 million of state money, a lease awarded without competition to a Michael Oakland company that didn't yet exist, and a lot of politics.

The administration of then-Gov. John Waihee was not at all happy about the coverage, as you can imagine.

Then in December of the same year, I wrote two long stories, the first showing the state had improperly diverted $65 million from a restricted airport fund to come up with the money needed to complete the racetrack purchase. Trouble over this deal persisted for years as a federal audit dragged on, eventually resulting in findings that supported my original assessment. The second story pieced together just how the raid on airport funds was tied to the racetrack deal.

Another piece of the puzzle was the role of developer and political insider Tom Enomoto, Mike Oakland's partner in the racetrack business, who as I wrote at the time was "at the center of a network of companies and business associates contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to political campaigns over the last six years."

I first wrote about the network of political committees tied to Enomoto three years earlier in my old Hawaii Monitor newsletter.

State business registration records indicate Oakland and Enomoto are still partnered in at least one business apparently tied to the pending racetrack proposal.

This all just hints at the kind of behind the scenes dealing that has been in the background of the current bid for $50 million in tax credits.

If I have time, I'll try to grab a bit more of the interesting stuff from my old files.

April 4, 2006 - Tuesday

Here's an interesting observation from a reader:

this is offered simply to generate some discussion about news presentation in the 21st Century, if it interests you.

seem to me the front page heads in the Sunday Star-Bulletin and Advertiser are made-for-the-journalism-classroom discussion.

the S-B's "Officials Assess Flood Damage" would seem to be an example of what most journalism consultants decry as signaling a "process story." those key words — officials assess — are saying "yawn, don't bother reading this."

on the other hand, the Advertiser used "Oahu Cleans Up." Much more likely to draw you into buying the paper. Or, so say I. Others, including the S-B overnight head writers, may disagree.

i bring this up only because generally the S-B headlines far outshine the Advertiser's as reader grabbers.

again, so say I. The morning paper folks may disagree.

It's an interesting issue, although my view is that the phobia about "process" has contributed to the ignorance of the public about the hows and whys of governing. If the public never sees how the process of public decision-making and policy-making works, then they'll never be able to understand the substance of issues or, more importantly, have any clue about how they might get involved or make a difference.

The process might take some explanation, so people can see that an official assessment of flood damage will determine priorities for cleanup and reconstruction, as well as the availability of government aid to individual flood victims in different areas of the state.

The political process is dull if, and only if, you don't understand what's going on or what the implications are. For those who are clued in, at least partially, every one of those process stories is ripe with nuance and meaning. Or at least that's how it seems to me.

Maui County is initiating a program to expand understanding of the process. Applications are now being accepted for the County of Maui Academy, with the first class to begin next month. It sounds like an exciting initiative. Is a Honolulu Academy in the cards if the Maui experiment works? I can already foresee the raging debates over what is taught and what is not.

And I enjoyed this long flowing missive from Tim Devault in praise of Advertiser reporter Dan Nakaso (and other matters) enough to share it in it's entirety:

I fleetingly shared a Chinatown sidewalk a while ago with a man in a wheelchair happily shopping for vegetables as I was sauntering back to town from Dole Cannery. He was the retired Chief of the HPD, Michael Nakamura, and he was looking as happy as a shopper could. All of the salient elements of his ordeals, as well as the mood and grassroots management of Honolulu police offficers generally, could hardly have been brought more expertly into sharper focus than in Dan Nakaso's article about his death in this morning's Advertiser.

I have been propelled out the comfort of reading Dan Nakaso reportage before. Particularly I'm thinking of the morning that produced pages of Advertiser articles regarding the mysteries of 2 missing young Danish women who had just been found after surviving more than a week without food on a precarious ledge behind Kahana Valley on Pu'u O'huluhulu at 2,000 feet. That morning I hiked in found the almost invisible trail that they had taken that led me for almost 3 hours from the hunter check-in station that straddles spectacular views including Waihole & Waikane Valleys and struggles up 3 vertical ancient rope-assisted sections to the saddle a few feet below the summit of P'uu O'huluhulu.  

Like the time I called Steve Nicolet at KPOI from a pay phone minutes after hearing an electric 5 minute newscast really well done by a new newsman, Dick Wainwright, a few weeks after AFTRA took me out of doing that same news job myself because I had just invested 2 months doing the 1970 Census while everybody else had been invested in picketing on the Ala Wai, and said it suddenly didn't bother me, as it had, that the listening public had finally shortened the substantive 15 minutes of news on KPOI every 3 hours down to what amounted to less than 2 minutes after sports, weather & recorded ads every hour. I am inspired by the news well reported. I enthusiastically related this newly discovered sense of Kahana back-country that evening to Dan Nakaso at the front desk, which is just not done, but what do I know?

Governor Lingle is looking for solutions to the homeless problem. I arrived in Calcutta yesterday morning more than 8 hours late aboard train 2382-down, the Poorva Express, from New Delhi, pulling into Howrah Station at 12:04 am. A massive sleeping facility for that situation, called the Yatri Niwas, is steeped just south of Howrah Station, the ultimate no-man's land.  Lots of dorm space was available but the building was closed. Open a building would be my suggestion. Screw it & the taxi wallah regime, which I've never used ever in 10 weeks in India. That impass with all its background dog barking occasioned a delicious late hour hike accross the massive Howrah Bridge into north Calcutta over the Hooghly River, past minions of dossers, through BBD Bagh, past the GPO, through streets permanently choked with every sclerotic variety of traffic by day, including even the most perilous intersections, that by late night have been transformed as if by Disneyland into a delightful Central Park without wheels.

Whew.

April 3, 2006 - Monday

It wasn't the six weeks of rain and flooding, it was the power hiccup during yesterday's hours of thunder and lightning that knocked some 200+ gigabytes on two hard drives out of commission. At first, neither one could be recognized, but after some fiddling and moving and trial-and-error troubleshooting, I determined that each would start up normally when individually connected to my Powerbook. I'm relatively confident all the data is secure, including thousands of photographs, most backed up to DVD but, of course, not all. My current working hypothesis is that a power surge damaged either the power strip they were plugged into or their individual power supplies. This is consistent with not running in their former daisy-chain configuration, which requires extermal power, but starting individually with the laptop, where they can be powered directly via the firewire cable.

I have to admit not fully appreciating my parents' reports of Friday's flooding in Kahala until viewing these short video clips by Lawrence Rowland. Amazing scenes for anyone familiar with Kahala.

Changing gears, Bob Jones comments:

Readers may have wondered about NYTimes veteran reporter Larry Rohter's Easter Island piece calling it "the farthest place from anywhere else."

EI sure ain't the farthest from another inhabited land mass. We are. But I guess he's technically right because we are a series of islands, and so Oahu ain't far from anyplace else, like Molokai.

EI's only about 2000 miles from Chile.

It looks like Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia mixed up his cue cards with Dick Cheney's. According to a story in the Boston Herald, Scalia greeted questions about his ability to be objective on issues of church and state with a pointed comment and gesture:

“To my critics, I say, ‘Vaffanculo,’ ” while making the gesture. That’s Italian for (expletive) you.

So what was the official response? Fire the photographer who captured the scene.

Only a month left before the Legislature is scheduled to adjourn. I guess I'm going to survive.

April 2, 2006 - Sunday

The Star-Bulletin captured Friday's flooding in town with a photo on page A-1 that wrapped around the whole section. And it was a great photo both ways, which viewed partially on A-1 and when opened to full size. Another great job by the Bulletin's designers and artists.

click for larger photo

But the S-B also had to run a correction yesterday:

» The Honolulu Advertiser received 26 awards, including 10 first-place awards, in the Pa'i Awards contest. A story on Page A5 in the early edition yesterday gave a lower total -- it did not include all the awards won by the Advertiser's Custom Publishing Group and its Pacific Media Publishing.

From Maui comes another comment on Hawaiian Telcom's switch of DSL customers from Verizon.net to an in-house system:

Aloha I live on Maui but would like to reply to your article regarding verizon's change over. I am extremely upset with them and am considering legal action with them. Not only does their web site not work also the phone # provided does not work from Maui does I am not getting any of my emails.

I'm a DSL customer but didn't use Verizon email, so the switch has been a non-issue. Other, though, obviously aren't happy campers. Service delays are also going to increase as Hawaiian Telcom's repair technicians will at least temporarily be relying on paper orders and reports rather than the computerized reporting system maintained by Verizon.

We dragged ourselves into Honolulu yesterday for an auction, and ended up with a small watercolor painting. We both like the wet-on-wet technique that was also used by Hon Chew Hee. And when we got home and looked up the artist, Beth Watkins, we learned that she was the president of the Hawaii Watercolor Society in 1964, just the third year after its founding by Hee.

And it's time for another look at a few of our Kaaawa morning dogs, the neighborhood canines who watch for us every morning in hopes of dog biscuit and perhaps a few pets. Just click on Mr. Kolohe for more.