Alaska Secretary of State: No Such Agency

On the heals of my blog post on Alaska voter turnout, I thought I should address the people looking for the Secretary of State’s office in Alaska. There isn’t one and hasn’t been one for decades. Typical Secretary of State functions in other states include running elections, registering corporations, registering notaries, and in some states, [...]

alaska voter turnout

Today’s “from the search log” phrase is “alaska voter turnout.” I don’t recall having written about this directly, but it does have an easy answer. Go to the Alaska Division of Elections site at http://www.elections.alaska.gov/statistics/turnoutg.htm and you can find general election voter turnout since statehood. There is a separate page for primary voter turnout since [...]

Summer Sunset Sky

Summer Sunset Sky
Originally uploaded by AlaskanLibrarian

Here is one of the photos I took from the front porch as I was reading on Friday night. When the sun comes out, Juneau just glows. So glad I wasn’t in front of a computer!

The pleasures of unplugging for an evening

Yesterday in Alaska a MAJOR news story broke out. Because of my employer, I will not be writing anything publicly on this issue aside from saying that it is very big news here.
When I got home yesterday, it was a huge temptation to flip on the computer and start reading every scrap of commentary I [...]

Obama Acceptance Shows Why He Should be President

I just came back from a gathering of 200 of my fellow Alaskans who came together to watch Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. You can find the text of the speech at http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/28/obama.transcript/index.html.
I am so proud to be an Obama supporter tonight. Listening to Senator Obama and reviewing the text of his speech once I got [...]

JanSport Delivers!

Recently the JanSport backpack I’ve used for a number of years suffered “zipper disease” where it simply wouldn’t stay zipped. I went to the JanSport web site and looked up their lifetime warranty information. It took me a week or so to box up and mail my backpack. JanSport sent me a postcard when they [...]

prudhoe bay oil sales to china (none)

One of the nice things about having my blog on WordPress is the ability to see what searches bring people to my blog. From time to time, I’ll try to pluck out some search terms or phrases that I’m pretty sure weren’t satisfied by looking at my blog and see if I can’t provide more [...]

Reason 8 to Vote Obama: For Hillary Supporters

The other day on NPR I heard that 1 out of 5 Clinton supporters say they plan to vote for Senator McCain. If you are one of those people, this blog entry is for you.
I can understand your hurt and disappointment, particularly since Senator Clinton seemed like such a shoe-in back in December 2007. If [...]

Book Review: Tipping Point

I just got around to listening to the audiobook version of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell reads his own book and this time it is a good thing.
I find this book to be well-reasoned and well documented. It is discouraging in that it shows how basically irrational many of our decisions truly [...]

Correction to Reference Renaissance Postings

Dear Readers:
In each of my posting on Reference Renaissance, I said:
Note: By August 20, 2008, all of the presentation slides and handouts for Reference Renaissance will posted to the conference site at http://www.bcr.org/referencerenaissance/index.html. Later in the year, Neal-Schuman will be publishing conference proceedings. I’m looking forward to those, since I (or anyone else) could only [...]