Dear City Council:

iCare.  iLove. iBelieve. iWant.  Hire I.  Or me. 

Who wouldn’t want to be in charge of $2.7 billion biennial budget and 2,400 employees?  So. much. Power.  With a population of 200,000, Tacoma’s metropolis is sagging in uncouthly ways that we wish to cover.  Perhaps Andy Warhol’s flower might pull in the I-5 eyes over that of the Port’s very omniscent presence, but there’s no way to get rid of the stench of losing so many businesses the past few years except to hustle and bustle and blow the house down, and rebuild.  Ken Miller’s proposal that we have two wild cards which might save us is thought provoking and brilliantly crafted, but is Joint Base Lewis McCord and our booming meuseums (arts and cultural tourism) enough to capitalize upon to cause growth? 

That remains to be seen when the Council hires a new City Manager. 

There is a huge litany of “To Do’s” that we all complain about: pot holes, B&O tax, paid parking downtown, lack of public transporation (Voters! Take responsibility for that one!), crazy weird zoning codes (Marty Campbell and David Boe helped me out in that weird situation), billboard blight, closing schools, gangs, Corporation Flight outta town, vacant buildings, high crime, petty crime, non-responsiveness of police, judicial system overload – I’m glad I’m not the Mayor or City Manager, except it would be nice to get $200,450. I could put up with a lot of complaining for that paycheck (you can see how much each city employee earns by checking out this TNT website). 

Our Four Finalists, who will be putting up with a lot of whinning bloggers (myself excluded, naturally), are:

Rey Arellano
Arellano is currently serving as interim city manager for the City of Tacoma and is responsible for a $2.7 billion biennial budget and 2,400 employees. Since 2006, Arellano has served as the deputy city manager and chief information officer for the city. Prior to Tacoma, Arellano worked for the City of San Diego, Calif. as the deputy city manager and chief information officer from 2002-2006, and from 1999-2002 he was a group project manager for Ryder System Inc.

T.C. Broadnax
Broadnax has worked as the assistant city manager in San Antonio, Texas since 2006.  San Antonio is a full-service city with an operating budget of $1.6 billion and 11,600 employees. Prior to this position he was the assistant city manager for the city of Pompano Beach, Fla. from 2004-2006, the deputy city manager from 2001-2004 and the assistant to the city manager/budget officer from 1997-2001.

Craig Malin
Malin has worked as the city administrator of Davenport, Iowa since 2001. As city administrator, he leads 15 department heads, 1,000 employees and oversees a $210 million annual budget. From 1999 to 2001, Malin was the chief administrative officer for Douglas County, Wis. and the assistant manager, assistant to the manager and administrative assistant in Vernon Hills, Ill.

Andrew Neiditz
Neiditz has worked as city manager of Lakewood, Wash. since 2005. Neiditz manages an $87 million budget and has oversight over a six member executive team, 15 member management team and 250 employees. Prior to this position, he was the city administrator for Sumner from 1999-2005, the deputy city manager of Lakewood from 1996-1999, and the executive director of public safety from 1993-1996.

The question remains.  Will we go Local (Arellano), Texas, Iowa, or Lakehood for our City Manager? 

Let the Council Begin.

Rosetta Stone is a visual program. For those who have never used it, a typical screen looks like this:

You are presented with four pictures. Depending on the mode, you may be asked to repeat audio describing the picture, type text describing the picture, match pictures with text, or match pictures with audio. The new version, TOTALe, adds multiple things: after each lesson, you may schedule a video chat session with a native speaker, who walks you through the lesson, reviewing key terms, just like in a classroom. There are also six different games: one of them based on Concentration, some based on chatting, some based on describing pictures. You can play games solo or with partners.

I found the program woefully inadequate. Three reasons:

Theory

The theory of Rosetta Stone is based on how children learn their native language. They get no grammar lessons, there are no flash cards, they just learn. This is all true; the gap, however, comes when one applies this theory to adults. We are simply not capable of learning languages like children. Our brains are too advanced, too stuck in our native languages, and too developed. It is possible for us to learn this way, it’s just slow.

This theory was the most frustrating part of my Rosetta Stone experience. It is incredibly laborious to learn grammatical concepts through pictures and limited text. Often, when learning a new concept, I asked myself “Okay, I understand that this is correct – but WHY?” Just taking one glance at a grammar textbook could have given me the answer I needed in less than a minute, yet learning a grammatical concept (like adjective endings in German) could take up to two hours of intense study in Rosetta Stone. For example in Dutch, “zullen” is a conditional marker for verbs (would be, would do, etc.) but also means should. I was able to figure this out by referring to a Dutch grammar website, but I don’t know if I ever would have gotten it if I had just used Rosetta Stone to try and learn it. Introduction of grammatical concepts inside Rosetta Stone often leads to frustration at not being able to learn the theory behind why a language feature exists.

The program itself

Not only is the theory fundamentally flawed, the program is so simplistic that I can’t believe the company employs as many people as it does. The stock photography (mostly taken near the company headquarters in Virginia) is used across the board in every language. This means you can be learning what a house looks like in Chinese and be seeing an American house. In a critical review, a learner using the Russian version remarked that one of the pictures prominently featured paper towels as part of a concept, but noted that in Russia, no one would know what a paper towel was. It is difficult to make semantic connections in other languages when a fat African-American man, an Asian woman, and a white teenager are smiling in a soccer field, “speaking” in Gaelic.

The program is also incredibly repetitive and simplistic. I often found myself reviewing flash cards in another window, because the interface takes too long to switch between scenes. At the start and end of every lesson, the program makes you repeat the word for goodbye TWICE, something which is completely unnecessary. I only need to learn the word for goodbye once, and I’ll know it forever. But if you’re going at the program’s pace, you’re going to need to repeat it every thirty minutes. One time, I completed a set of cards, and the next screen was the same set of cards, as a “review”. Additionally, I found that 90% of the time when I got an answer wrong, it was because I was unsure of what the picture should represent. For example, when the person inside the picture is talking, a small speech bubble is drawn to the text. When not, the same text stays, but without the speech bubble. This leads to confusion as to whether you should use the first or third person when responding to the program’s query. There are also situations where multiple answers are possible, but the program only accepts one.

The price tag

$999. For basically a couple thousand screens with pictures and audio. Plus, this only grants you access to the program for one year.

The bottom line

Rosetta Stone have created a brand name. When you think of language learning, you think of Rosetta Stone first. The brand has such incredible equity that people don’t even realize that they just spent $400 for something they’ll likely use for three weeks, get bored, and quit. It is possible to learn languages with Rosetta Stone. But for the price, it’s not worth it. Anyone could learn a language in half the time with a grammar reference, flash card program, YouTube videos, and a web forum. If you would like suggestions for any of these things, that might be a Facebook note for another time.

If after reading all this, you still want to try it out, please don’t pay for it. Just use BitTorrent. Until the company can deliver a quality product, they don’t deserve your money.

One evening, I could feel my anxiety increasing. It had become apparent to me that I would have to leave the Seattle area the next morning, fly to Los Angeles and bring my mom Lillian back home with me.

It was October 2009. I had received a call from my one of my Mom’s closest friends who said that she was very sick, weak and could not get out of bed. In the summer of 2009, my mother had been diagnosed with Chronic Leukemia, a serious disease that would require treatment and monitoring. Now, it appeared she had a serious respiratory infection due to her compromised immune system. Mom also suffers from high blood pressure and Type 2 Diabetes, high cholesterol and advanced Rheumatoid Arthritis.

Although I had been urging her to move from Los Angeles to Seattle for several years, she had always resisted, craving her independence and not wanting to leave her home. However, now she was very ill. It was obvious she needed to be close to her family here, which included my wife and my 18-year-old son. My wife has been very involved, as well, in caring for Mom. She is definitely in the right place.

I found myself faced with a dilemma that many children of elderly parents face – when to step in and take significant control of my parent’s life. Even at 53, I still feel that intrinsic respect you have for a parent. Deep down, I feel like I wanted approval for decisions I had to make, especially one that will uproot my Mom permanently from her home, friends and familiar surroundings.

I began to remember stories from other friends who had to fight with their parents and virtually kidnap them due to their deteriorating health. I also remembered the news stories about parents becoming very ill while alone in their own homes, and, of course, that commercial where an elderly woman falls and there is no one to help her.

Mom had lived in that house with my Dad since 1965. He passed away in 1999, but the lingering memories provided comfort for my mother. Who was I to take her away from that kind of emotional security? The fact that she was lucid only made it harder to make that decision to relocate her.

Since moving to Seattle, she has seen a several doctors, been hospitalized three times and undergone chemotherapy four times. Her health is more stable now, and she lives with my wife and me. She no longer drives and still suffers from her other health problems. She takes 12 different medications.

My anxiety is still present. I continue to worry about her health. Her blood pressure can get dangerously high; she has trouble walking at times, and tires easily. I work full time and have family responsibilities and as a male, I also feel I must suppress my emotions and try to stay in problem-solving mode. I feel responsible for making the right decisions and, in the process, make decisions that everyone will be happy about. I am a problem solver. However, it is impossible to make decisions that everyone will be happy with and solve all the problems.

As an adult child of an ailing parent, I can only show her love and rely on my own personal wisdom and intuition. Fortunately, mom finally agreed to put the house in Los Angeles up for sale and two months ago it sold. She is ready to write a new chapter in her life here in Seattle. So, I guess some of my decisions were right after all.

The scientific and medical professionals, in many ways, have always been part of “the elite.” As a result, they can seem, at times, mysterious, inscrutable, and other. For example, how many magazine articles, websites, and advertisements have you seen that contain the phrase, “what your doctor won’t tell you”?  This is baseless paranoia since doctors are not only obligated to keep you well informed, but information is a key aspect of the healing process.  This reassurance hardly matters though if the medical elite wish to keep you uninformed for their own inscrutable and nefarious reasons. In a striking vignette, a few years back, “Airborne” became an extremely popular herbal supplement that was purported to prevent and cure the cold and flu.  It’s selling point? It was “discovered” by a mere school teacher.  The implicit message is a simple woman has overcome the resistance of the medical establishment to provide you with a simple and much needed cure.  Airborne was successfully sued by the Federal Trade Commission for fraud. Such frauds are effective by playing into a deep-seated distrust of elite professionals entrusted with our health.  In the past, doctors and scientists have been equated with witch-doctors and hucksters. Today, such prejudice is still exceedingly vibrant.

But we’re not talking about some hokey cure-all. Snake oil salesmen have been around as long as…. well, snake oil. We’re talking about a present and alarming trend of people using accusations of elitism to condemn or ridicule scientists and the scientific community. For instance, on August 15, GOP candidate Rick Perry said, “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.”  In essence: scientists are manufacturing a problem to steal from the public.  And quite a conspiracy it is: 95% of climatologists have concluded that climate change is the result of man-made pollution. Rick Perry wants to protect you from these scientists and the solution is as simple as turning in your ballot next November. Of course, the evil scientists may not be malicious fraudsters; it could be mere incompetence.  Such is the sentiment of an article from August 10th in the Wall Street Journal.

On the 10th, the front page of the WSJ displayed this headline, “Mistakes in Scientific Studies Surge”. According to the Journal, there has been a 15-fold increase in the number of papers retracted since in the last 10 years.  In 2001 there were 22 retractions versus 339 retractions in 2010. The reasons cited to explain this alarming trend were: the need for scientists to produce flashy results, unwillingness to duplicate work, poor oversight on the part of the individual journals, and fraud. The WSJ cites as its source for these broad ranging implications, a single database that controls access to 11,000 journals.  Assuming the single database represents an accurate representation of the entire spectrum of scientific research; consider the sheer mass of data contained in 11,000 journals, each pumping out hundreds of articles a year.  If we assume a ridiculously low figure of 10 articles per journal every year, a simple calculation gets us an accuracy rating of 99.7%.  How puerile are your standards of excellence if 99.7% isn’t good enough? It is easy to show large changes in exceedingly rare phenomena like scientific incompetence or malfeasance, but this hardly realistic evidence of a disturbing trend. Yes the rate of paper retractions increased 15-fold, but that figure minimizes the dramatic increase in the number of papers and publications, and ignores completely the burgeoning complexity of the tasks scientists have undertaken.

The story of the WSJ article is simple and threatening: the common man is being betrayed by scientists. By proxy, we are betrayed by science and there is little if anything you can do about it. This is an insane argument since the numbers do not even remotely reflect that possibility.

Are there renegades and frauds in the scientific community?  Absolutely.  For example, the infamous Wakefield study published in the prestigious medical journal “Lancet” showed a link between vaccination and autism.  That study was recently shown to be overtly fraudulent.  As the result of that one small study, thousands of parents disregarded the advice of their doctors and flew in the face of conventional medical and scientific wisdom by refusing to get their kids vaccinated.  The Wakefield study is a horrendous scandal that cost a lot of kids their lives from easily preventable illnesses that had all but been eradicated from this country.   However tempting it might be, the occasional revelation of fraud and abuse is not an indictment of the scientific community and the community does not deserve the kind of anti-elitism endemic to our culture today.

It’s an understandable human need to seek simple answers, but all too often the media takes a single argument from the scientific discussion and dispenses it as an absolute truth.  It is nothing short of a cynical ploy to stoke fears and amass attention.  Unfortunately, we live in a world that is becoming progressively hostile to absolute truths and the best that science ever offers is increasingly well defined probabilities.  It can be an uncomfortable place to be.   While it is always difficult and frequently necessary to examine our preconceived notions of whatever passes for truth these days, the struggle is always worth it.  It’s time to have a reasonable conversation about the world around us without having to resort to conniptions and hysteria.  As a direct result from this kind of demagoguery, science is under a direct and existential threat from politicians and media personalities who delight and quibble over mistakes that account for far less than .3% the entire field of active research.

There are plenty of ways to be part of the solution.  Voting for politicians who do not overtly disdain the opinion of professionals is probably one of the most effective strategies available.  Speak up, write emails, go to the town hall meetings and make sure the candidates represent your views.  Social-network the hell out of the internet.  Certain television channels and programs are writhe with error and bias, turn them off and write the show demanding higher standards of excellence.  We live in the information age where knowledge is literally power.  This is not some meaningless aphorism, but an undeniable truth.  Our weapons are the pen and keyboard.  Your actions, or inaction, do matter and they do make a difference.   This may be more than any one person can do. Start small with something simple like writing to the Wall Street Journal or your local congressmen and senators to ask them to support scientists on the numerous scientific issues we that we face today. In whatever way you choose, it is vitally important to get involved.

The Mona Lisa of headstands

Savasana (also known as Corpse Pose, or as I call it, “nap time”) has always been my favorite part of yoga. It’s the time at the end of practice where one aims to relax the body and quiet the mind while laying restfully on the back. Practicing Savasana here, underneath the warm, elusive Seattle sun, softly swaying on the waters of Shilshole Bay off the coast of Ballard, is pure bliss.

I, along with five others, have just completed an hour of yoga on the two-by-10 foot surface of a stand up paddleboard, referred to as “SUPs”. Our instructor, Hasna Atry, guided us not only through an array of postures, but also through the basic ins-and-outs of stand up paddleboarding. Even the novices like me who had never even set eyes on one had to make the roughly two-thirds mile round trip paddle to our yoga spot.

Surf Ballard has quickly become the buzz of Seattle as the only spot offering this new adaption of the widely practiced workout. Hasna, who has quite the perfect yoga name, has been teaching small classes on the water just since this May and on dry land for two years. While more “temperature friendly” spots such as Hawaii and California already have SUP yoga classes in place, it was Hasna’s friendship with Surf Ballard’s co-owner Andrew Drake that brought SUP yoga, now called WASUP, to the Pacific Northwest.
“Because of my connection with Andrew, I could just take out boards whenever I wanted and was practicing yoga on them, and I was like maybe the rest of the world wants to have fun with me too! So the creation of it was really organic,” said Hasna. “But I’m still playing with [the practice], just figuring out what is accessible and doable on the paddleboard. I’m exploring.”

The sessions she began conducting mostly with friends and family were noticed by the blog My Ballard, and quickly picked up by King 5 and The Seattle Times. Shortly after WASUP experienced a surge of success with a Living Social offer of three classes for $30 (thanks to a thoughtful boyfriend I am part of that surge).

As only a recreational yoga practitioner, meaning I do it whenever it strikes my lazy fancy, I was concerned about my ability to combine it with an unstable surface on top of very chilly waters. But Hasna makes it quite clear that poses can be taken only as far as is comfortable to each individual student, making it appealing to both newbies and yogis alike.

For example, Hasna, not surprisingly after seeing her grace and agility on the SUP, executed a headstand on the board, where as I was more than happy to stay in the prep position. “The people that are doing it sometimes have an established practice in yoga, sometimes not and are just willing to feel it out and meet themselves exactly where they are. So I find people not getting too frustrated with themselves, sort of being able to laugh it off and say, ‘I can’t do that yet, but that’s ok.’”

However Hasna says there are a few connective threads she sees in her students: “They are people that are adventurous, have good amount of confidence in their body awareness, and are hardy. So like, on rainier days people are still showing up, like, ‘give me a hat, I’ll still go out,’ or ‘give me a wetsuit and let’s go do this.’”

“Did you fall in?” everyone asks. No, I didn’t (though I surely would have had I attempted that headstand!), and neither did anyone in the two sessions I’ve been to so far, but Hasna says you have to leave yourself open to the possibility it may happen. “People always ask me how often someone falls in and I never have an answer,” she said, “I would say it happens less often than it does happen. But it does happen.”

While I managed to stay dry, I did not escape the next-day soreness. The strength required by your core just to stay balanced and the energy exerted by your shoulders to paddle is a workout in itself, and when coupled with Hasna’s fully encompassing yoga practice I was left reaching for some Advil (in a good way, of course!)

Individual two-hour classes are $23, which is excellent considering that just a two-hour SUP rental at Surf Ballard is $30. “I tried really hard to make it affordable for people so they can gain a practice out of it, instead of coming once and saying ‘yeah, that was cool, but I can’t afford it,’” said Hasna. “To me the value of more people being able to access this practice is important.” For more information and to register for a class (Hurry! They book up FAST), visit wasupyoga.com. Namaste.

After seeing this little gem shared by some friends on facebook, there was something about it that was just absurdly funny to me. Essentially, we have this bigoted fellow named Andrew Shirvell, obsessively stalking and harassing a gay college student who is the University of Michigan’s Student Body President. Here’s CNN’s video of the matter.

How this guy still has a job is ridiculous. As you’ve watched, Andrew Shirvell started a blog to attack this completely innocent college student. You can check that out here. (Update: Andrew has blocked access to his blog. Too bad.)

We, at The Melon, decided it would be a good idea to uncover the truth about Andrew Shirvell and started our own blog revealing to the world that he is in fact a Nazi Space Alien. http://andrew-shirvell–watch.blogspot.com/

The Melon just got wind of a great new music video from Fice, a T-Loc hip hop artist. The video for the song “Two Five Three” features a some shots and props to a lot of great locations (hello MSM deli) and captures the proud spirit of Tacoma well. Look for Fice’s song to become Tacoma’s new unofficial anthem. Take a listen.

In response to the current oil spill disaster in the Gulf, Green Peace has developed a design competition charging participants to redesign BP’s logo to better reflect their image. Here are some of my favorites.

Friend of The Melon, David Tveite has begun presenting his work on “A Regular Dude’s World Atlas, ” a presentation of the world by someone with a really good internet connection. Here’s a clip from one of his hilarious entries:

“Andorra is a thoroughly unimpressive little country of some 88,000 citizens located in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain. Andorrans speak Catalan, a language which is kind of like Spanish but not nearly as useful. Andorra was first discovered in 1278, when France was taking a shower and noticed a kind of abnormal growth near its genitals. Distraught, France rushed to the doctor, who assured it that the growth was Andorra, not cancer. France was very lucky this turned out to be correct because relatively speaking, 13th-century oncology wasn’t exactly the most reliable science ever.”

David is only on the A’s right now, but I’m excited to see this develop.

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