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January 18, 2003 - Saturday
I received this email yesterday afternoon from Nathan Goldstein, communications director for the UH Foundation:
A friend turned me on to the coverage of Evan Dobelle's sustainability speech last Saturday on your site. I wanted to put to rest any concern about why the speech was removed from his website. Inadvertently, a draft version of the speech was sent to the University webmaster. It was a day before we noticed. I asked that it be pulled and the final draft be put in its place--- it's there now. You may want to inform your reader who noted the difference.
Then there was this comment from another sharp reader and former editor:
I agree with you: The Star-Bulletin did a superb job -- beating the Advertiser badly -- on its thorough obituary of Gladys Brandt.
But the Star-Bulletin sometimes fails to write obituaries of significant people. I never saw an obit last year on Arthur Trask and I'm still waiting to see one on Frances Patches Damon Holt.
This week the Star-Bulletin ran a 27-inch obit on a person of no perceivable local interest, a former publisher of the Kansas City Star.
Agreed. I learned a lot from the Advertiser's obit of Holt, which was also served as a glimpse into the social history of the left-leaning offspring of some of Hawaii's elite familites.
| I couldn't help noticing this ad in the Advertiser earlier this week for Hokua, a new Honolulu condominium project.
The headline: "Location is Everything. Especially when this is the location."
The only problem is that the photo isn't really taken from the building's location.
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The photo appears to be taken from the Ewa end of Ala Moana Park, looking across the length of the park towards Waikiki.
The Hokua condo, on the other hand, will be across Ala Moana Blvd. from the park, in a lineup with the Nauru Tower and the 1350 Ala Moana condominium. It will likely still have great views, but not quite the expanse depicted in the print ad.
January 17, 2003 - Friday
The Star-Bulletin beat the Advertiser handily yesterday with Sally Apgar's beautiful front page story on Gladys Brandt, who died Wednesday night. The SB got the story into its early edition, even the one delivered to Kaaawa in the morning. The Advertiser didn't get the story onto their web edition until 2:10 p.m., and it appears today in their print edition. I don't know if it made it to the PM print edition yesterday.
Two other things happened yesterday morning. Evan Dobelle's controversial speech was suddenly pulled off of the UH web site, and is still missing in action this morning. And the university lost another member of the Board of Regents when former chair Alan Ikawa resigned. According to the Hawaii Tribune-Herald, "Ikawa's responsibilities included leading the search committee that helped pick Evan Dobelle as the university's new president." The resignation was confirmed as the Regents gathered for a two-day meeting in Hilo.
It looks like there are a lot of dangerous political currents at the highest levels of UH administration.
One final (?) note on Dobelle's speech from a reader:
What is printed on the UH website as the text of the speech Evan Dobelle presented at the Sustainability Workshop is not the full text. He made a rather extensive presentation on how few minutes children actually spend in school compared to the minutes spent outside school, how the schools and the teachers are blamed for what's not their fault, and how the teachers are not paid enough. He even included some numbers in that foray into education.
In addition, he made a pointed comment about the supreme court interjecting itself into Hawaiian elections, to the detriment of native Hawaiians.
These are two significant items which were not printed in the text of his address which is on the UH website. There may be other items which slip my mind at the moment. He may have deviated from the text but neither of those items seemed ad lib to me as I listened. It could be that what's printed on the website is a draft but it certainly is not the full text of what was delivered on Saturday.
Joe P., writing from Japan, spotted this typo in a Japan Times story:
My favorite newspaper typo of the new year, from this sumo writeup:
"Ozeki Asashoryu, a fiery soldier from the land of Genghis Khan, continued to add momentum and destruction in his wake -- this time brutalizing third-ranked Dejima (1-1) with a no-holes-barred frontal assault."
Joe then asks: "How many years in jail would a no-holes-barred frontal assault get you in Hawaii?"
January 16, 2003 - Thursday
If you missed the late addition to yesterday's entry, the full text of UH President Dobelle's remarks at a weekend conference, criticized by some in the audience, is available online. You can decide for yourself whether he was on target or not. [Update: Dobelle's speech was removed from the UH web site sometime later in the morning and was no longer available for public viewing. You'll have to check later to find out if it's been restored.]
With Canada's western province still reeling from the DUI arrest of Premier Gordon Campbell, an enterprising observer quickly offered a whole line of mugshot products, according to a story in the Vancouver Sun. Along with Campbell's mugshot, each item says:
"Trip for 2 to Maui: $2,164 Cdn. Bail for DUI after a night of festivities: $257. A picture of you holding an arrest information board published for all your constituents to see: PRICELESS."
These customized products are produced via CafePress, the same way that I'm able to offer coffee mugs and t-shirts.
On a more serious note, an interesting and under reported case goes to federal court in San Francisco tomorrow morning. The case, by Silicon Valley-ite John Gilmore, challenges several of the post-9/11 travel restrictions.
My case against John Ashcroft, TSA, and various other agencies will have its first hearing at 9AM on January 17, 2003 in San Francisco. You-all are encouraged to attend if you're nearby. We'll be arguing about whether the case should be thrown out as invalid.
I'm asking for a declaration from the court that would overturn the unconstitutional requirement that US persons must show ID to travel throughout the US. Not only airplanes, but trains, buses, cruise ships, and major hotel chains are now enforcing ID requirements, largely at the behest of the Federal Government. Many skyscrapers also demanded ID for a time after 9/11; I refused, and eventually most of them have relented. I have not flown in the US since 9/11/01, and I've recently been refused lodging as well as travel, for my refusal to present ID on demand. (Note that this is a *separate* issue from the government's recent demand for more information from citizens who enter the US border. That's a bad idea too, but raises different issues.)
We free citizens have not only a constitutional right to travel throughout the US without government-imposed restrictions, but also a constitutional right to refuse to identify ourselves to government agents unless there is probable cause to suspect us of a crime. These aren't made-up issues. There are many legal cases that uphold them in the last few decades, as well as more than a hundred years ago. Read our reply brief for a guide to these cases.
We citizens also have a right to know what the laws are that affect the general public. There is no such law requiring IDs of travelers, and TSA won't publish their secret regulation that purports to require ID. So nobody actually knows whether ID is required, in what circumstances, what kinds of ID are OK or not, what options people without ID have, etc. (By nobody, I really mean nobody -- not even the people "enforcing" this "rule" know what the "rules" are. Try refusing to show ID on your next flight, and when they tell you that you can't board, ask them what regulation requires you to show ID to board a plane. I did this on July 4, 2002. The resulting confusion of different answers from each person in authority would be very amusing if it wasn't an unconstitutionally vague infringement on the right to travel.)
Gilmore's original release from last July, when the case was filed, provides this personal description:
Mr. Gilmore is a businessman, civil libertarian, and philanthropist. He was the fifth employee of Sun Microsystems, an early author of open source software, and co-creator of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Cypherpunks, the DES Cracker, and the Internet's "alt" newsgroups. He serves as a director on several for-profit and nonprofit boards.
He's not just a crank, and it's an unusually thought provoking legal challenge. The various case documents are available online as well.
| It's been wet, windy, and pretty ominous in Kaaawa for several days. The winds have taken out several large branches and plants, even uprooting a small coconut tree that had planted itself on the little hillside next to our house.
We didn't walk yesterday morning, in deference to the rain. This is a photo from the day before.
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January 15, 2003 - Wednesday
No wonder the Star-Bulletin story on the grenade accident, referred to here yesterday, was vague on the circumstances of the Freedom of Information request that forced disclosure of an Army report on the incident. It was actually the Honolulu Advertiser and reporter William Cole that deserve the credit for pursuing the information, which became the basis for an Advertiser story published a week ago. The Star-Bulletin story appeared four days later, and obviously simply followed the Advertiser's lead.
Interestingly, the Advertiser contacted me to clarify the situation, but no one from the Star-Bulletin offered up a correction, despite the fact that folks in the newsroom bristle whenever they feel the 'Tiser has tried to take credit for their work.
During its 5 p.m. local news yesterday, Hawaii Public Radio was still broadcasting a story about the Sunday afternoon recovery of a missing 9 year old boy. The story was on television news Sunday night, and was covered extensively on Monday by other media. Why it still claimed a piece of KHPR's already limited local news late yesterday is a mystery.
The same newscast announced Gov. Lingle's latest two cabinet-level appointments without even a single sentence about their experience or backgrounds. If you weren't familiar with their names, the report provided no help at all.
A Honolulu attorney added confirmation about the appearance of UH President Dobelle at Saturday's workshop:
Dobelle was supposed to be a panel presenter, speaking on sustainability and Hawaii's economy. The only charitable explanation is that perhaps he wasn't told beforehand what he was supposed to be talking about, but I doubt that.
His presentation was a tedious ramble on how we need to "listen" to various unknown (at least unknown to the general public) UH faculty members who are going to save us from ourselves, and then degenerated into what I can only describe as a partisan political rant-and-rave with absolutely no connection to the topic at hand. I sat there thinking, what does Trent Lott and supposed closet racism of Republicans in D.C. have to do with sustainability?
This was the first time I have heard Dobelle speak. I was extremely disappointed, to put it mildly. His speech broke the flow and was a real downer on what up to then had been an upbeat conference, and I felt it started deteriorating as a result. I also felt sorry for City managing director Ben Lee, who was tasked to be the panel speaker after Dobelle and to talk about land use. You could tell he saw there was a problem. And as Lee put it ruefully in a joking manner at the start of his presentation, "I have just been told to cut my presentation to 15 minutes, and on top of that to save an additional 30 minutes to get the conference back on schedule."
But you can decide for yourself. The text of Dobelle's remarks is available online at the University of Hawaii's web site.
January 14, 2003 - Tuesday
Credit the Star-Bulletin's Gregg Kakesako for using the federal Freedom of Information Act to dig out info on an Army training accident that killed a Schofield soldier last year. At least it appears Kakesako deserves the credit, although the FOIA reference in the story is so passive that it leaves a bit of doubt about who actually made the FOIA request ("The report, which was only released through a Freedom of Information Act request..."). In context, though, it appears to have been Gregg's initiative. Good work. [Not so fast! Sometimes you can stumble over a somewhat misleading reference, which I apparently did trying to interpret the Star-Bulletin story referred to here. Watch tomorrow's early entry for a full correction. For now, though, be forewarned that the S-B apparently didn't really earn these kudos after all.]
The standing room only crowd at last weekend's Sustainability Workshop was well reported, but one concerned educator passed along this interesting observation:
I attended the Sustainability Workshop on Saturday at Dole Cannery. It truly was a packed house at 8 a.m. on a Saturday. Each of the speakers was good, though the list was long. It started with Gary Okino, Noel Brown (Friends of the UN), John Bullard (Sea Education Association), Jeremy Harris who introduced Linda Lingle, Linda Lingle, and then Evan Dobelle.
Evan Dobelle was not on the printed agenda as a main speaker but as a panelist. He did, however, give a major speech. His speech was extremely political, after Harris and Lingle went to great lengths to state that sustainability was not a partisan issue. Dobelle, after he told everyone how good the UH was (without saying it's under his leadership), made some personal comments which were far afield from sustainability. He attacked: locking people up without trials and denying them access to an attorney, the supreme court decision to give everyone access to OHA elections, the Republicans and how the Trent Lott situation was nothing but veiled racism. He wanted higher pay for teachers and touched on other "hot button" issues which were a real stretch to see what they had to do with sustainability.
It was getting late and I had another appointment so I left when his speech was over, not waiting for the panel part of the program. In the lobby on the way out were a significant number of people who felt his comments were purely political and were totally out of place at such a meeting. My only question (to myself) was what political office he's seeking (US senate or house).
To my knowledge, none of the media outlets mentioned how his speech/comments differed so much in tone from every other person on the program. I thought it might have been my personal perception but the people in the lobby put that to rest for me.
It sounds like I would have agreed with the substance of Dobelle's politics, but why such a pitch at in this setting remains an open question. Perhaps there was a less than successful segue into the broader issues? Anybody else who attended want to comment?
There's been a sudden surge in public opposition to the FCC's apparent readiness to accommodate increased concentration of ownership of the corporate media. To review comments being received, go to the FCC's search page and enter "02-277" as the proceeding number in the box at the upper left.
January 13, 2003 - Monday
The Victoria Times-Colonist has another long follow-up on the arrest of B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, which credits Ed Tanji and Lila Fujimoto of the Maui News for ferreting out the story.
I give the quote of the day title to one attributed to Maui attorney Stephen Songstad: "My God, if everybody who had a drink had to resign, there would be no one left to work."
The lights and the computer just flickered, but the power came back on almost instantly. Are we going to lose it again out in Kaaawa again? I've got my fingers crossed.
| I spent the afternoon yesterday working on another batch of bread.
What makes bread making so enjoyable? After all, it eats up disproportionate amounts of time, taking 5-6 hours from start to finish. And it tends to be messy, with bits of flour and sticky dough ending up who knows where. But it's something that proceeds by feel rather than by recipe, and once into the bread zone it's a relaxing experience. And more.
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Sunday bread |
| I also followed Ms. Harriet into her corner of the world where she's hanging out these days. Click on this photo or the cats banner to the right to follow along into Harry's hideaway. |
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The power's still on, but I won't press my luck. So that's it for today.
January 12, 2003 - Sunday
It was just too cold to get out of bed early today. I was buried in a down comforter with Meda and an array of cats until will after 6 a.m., then had to rush to feed cats, get coffee ready for later, grab a stack of dog biscuits and head out for the walk. Then it was back, turn the coffee maker on, go out to retrieve Harry from her territory in the back of the yard, check the morning papers, and finally get back to the computer.
Dennis from Hilo added his two cents to the discussion of local broadcast news with a defense of KHON:
KHON has declined??? What a toot! It is my slightly off beam opinion that KHON is the only local broadcast that has any integrity of the news ethic left. I'll give the writer a nod that during the entire holiday season nuzz in the islands is left to the interns or other such stand-in help they have available whilst the highly paid talking heads tend to spend their time with other nuzzless things.
The visitor should stick around and see the denigration of KGMB since Bob Sevey and the gang parted company. The nuzz is infiltrated with absolute Krapp, i.e., consumer reports etc.....and I personally hate the lead-in's for nuzzbreaks.....the "We'll tell you more" is about the top of the heap in my not to watch any further pile. I was off island during the 50th anniversary celebration but caught the re-run.....I'd love to have your writer compare the night and day of KGMB and it's presentation of news.
As for the relevance of off island stories, perhaps this represents the cosmopolitan aspect of the islands these daze, maybe not. I do concur that all media outlets failed the 2nd congressional district story but so did the candidates with outdated web sites and other aspects of getting the word out. Sign waving has limited effectiveness and the candidates perhaps didn't care at this stage of the fight.
Joe Moore may not be the best nor most personable head in the industry but he's sincere in his presentation and oft times shares more of the contempt of the news stories with his remarks and facial machinations that make life a little more bearable at times....
Newspaper junkies might want to check out eBay's listing of a 1918 postcard published by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin the caption "Hawaii's First Territorial Fair, June 10-15, 1918". Four images on the card. This item has eight days to go.
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