WC used to get quite a lot of email from a reader who was deeply concerned about possible radiation from the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster reaching Alaska and the west coast of North America. Right concern; wrong ocean and wrong point source. The islands of North and South Novaya Zemlya in the Kara Sea, north of…
Carroll Spinney, who originated and played Sesame Street’s Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch for 50 years, is retiring. There’s a very nice biographical sketch in the New York Times. There’s an equally wonderful press release from Sesame Workshop. Thanks, Mr. Spinney. You helped a lot of kids dream; you helped a lot of kids fly.…
WC took a few days off from the bird species count for a road trip, likely the final camping trip of the year. Here’s a pro tip for RV owners: don’t even try to drive on a freeway in 35 mph winds with gusts to 50 mph, not even a short distance. Just. Don’t. Except…
Remember Frank Murkowski? He was a mostly ineffective U.S. Senator, and after that the Governor who presided over the biggest corruption scandal in Alaska’s history. He was the President and CEO of Alaska National Bank when the decisions were made that led to that bank’s failure.1 He’s the guy who appointed his daughter to succeed…
Commentary / Geology / Science
Geologic time can be beyond human comprehension. Sure, geologists have broken it into units: periods, epochs and stages, but it is still mind-numbingly vast. And at the same time, just a bit facile. Let’s use the Oligocene Epoch as an example. On the one hand, in terns of the history of the planet, the period…
Donald Trump promised us his administration would hire “the best people, the very best. Not the biggest donors or biggest supporters.” As a service to readers, WC provides this updated summary table of how that’s working out. Spoiler alert: Not so good. Note this is only a partial list. As investigations proceed, WC will continue…
“Plumbeous” means “lead-like,” and while the Plumbeous Rail’s body is dark grey, the bill and legs more than make up for the drab body. It’s not the best quality photo, but it’s a high-quality bird. It’s a widely distributed Rail, ranging from southern Ecuador to Tierra del Fuego. It’s also one of the easier rails…
WC continues to slog through a lot of pretty bad photos from a 2009 trip to Ecuador. About two-thirds of the way through 8,000 image library, WC has discarded about 4,000 photos. Whatever other lessons WC is learning from this experience, it’s clear that (a) the conversion from film to digital made WC shutter-happy, with…
WC’s effort to count the number of bird species he’s photographed continues. All the photos from Peru, Antarctica, Oaxaca, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago and the Galapagos have been reviewed. More than half have been discarded. The process necessarily slows down as you start running into duplicates. And it took about three hours to sort out…
A buddy of WC asked recently how many species of birds WC has photographed. It’s a little embarrassing, but any answer would be a guess. So WC is working through about 170,000 photos, trying to total them up. It’s complicated. First you have to decide what list of bird spcies you are going to use.…
The Anchorage Daily News, without any sense of irony, ran two stories in its October 8 edition that are a fine demonstration of Alaska working at cross-purposes to itself. First there was the Washington Post story on the recalculation of the rate of climate change. The report makes clear that the truly catastrophic changes from man-caused climate…
WC doesn’t propose to do a post-mortem on the Kavanaugh confirmation. The nearly-secret installation of the serial liar says it all. As citizens and voters, our only recourse is at the polls in November and in November 2020. We have to move on, which takes WC back to his Administrative Law course, back in law…
