Joe Miller is running for the U.S. Senate. WC’s not joking. Well, perhaps just a bit. That’s right, fresh from the conclusion of the last of the multiple lawsuits arising out of his failed attempt just two years ago, Miller declared his candidacy in . . . wait for it . . . Wasilla. Absent…
Trumpeter Swans circle to land in the farm fields southwest of Delta Junction, with Mt. Hayes (13,700 feet) in the background. The biggest bird in North America against the biggest mountain in the Central Alaska Range, on a lovely spring day. The honking of almost 100 Trumpeters and several hundred Canada Geese in the field…
WC wrote about Rancho Suamox back in January and the amazing life work of Rafael Ferro. Word of that post apparently reached Ecuador. WC received this message via Feedback: Thank you very much for the article about our work for the conservation and preservation of the environment, in Rancho Suamox, January 18, 2014. Cordially, Rafael…
The Alaska Legislature is thrashing around like a rattlesnake with a broken spine, and just as dangerous. But WC has better news. Spring migration has (finally) arrived in Alaska. The Swans are at Creamer’s Field. WC will let the swans, as it were, speak for themselves. WC hopes you can get out and have a…
Sometimes comics can be subversive, as well as entertaining. Ruben Bolling’s Tom the Dancing Bug is a case in point. Here’s Bolling’s take down of “creationist science” – Bolling’s cartoons aren’t always great, but beginning with Lucky Duckies and moving forward, they have been one of WC’s weekly web surfing stops. Highly recommended.
Psychologists study the paranoid conspiracy crowd at their peril. The journal Frontiers in Psychology: Personality Science and Individual Differences published a paper, “Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation,” by Stephan Lewandowsky, John Cook, Klaus Oberauer, and Michael Marriott. A year later, Frontiers formally retracted the paper, not because the science was bad.…
Senate Bill 108,[1] pending in the Alaska Legislature, would make criminal records confidential if the criminal case results in a “nonconviction” – the case is dismissed for some reason, or, more rarely, the jury acquits the defendant. Apparently, there are stupid people out there who are smart enough to use the internet to go to…
JALEP is Just Another Lunar Eclipse Photo. WC stood in the slush at the Dog Musher’s Field for a couple of hours Monday night photographing the total lunar eclipse in the southeast sky. Unlike a solar eclipse, a lunar eclipse is a leisurely, slow-developing event. It’s a consequence of the geometry, or the astrophysics, if…
Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal… In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour…
First, you have to understand the Heartbleed programming error. As usual, Randall Munroe at XKCD has an elegant explanation: Heartbleed isn’t malware; it isn’t really a bug. It’s a programming error, likely a piece of programmer diagnostic that got left in when it shouldn’t have been. Almost certainly, the first person to discover the Heartbleed…
This is a seriously wonkish post, but it is important because it goes to the heart of what the SCOTUS is doing with campaign spending limits and informs every aspect of First Amendment-protected speech. In the last ice age, when WC was a law student at a Certain Midwestern University, one of his professors was…
Sometimes The Onion goes through satire and out the other side. Thursday’s piece on the Chicago Cubs. Child Shown Field Where Cubs Suck SPORTS NEWS IN BRIEF • Sports • Baseball • ISSUE 50•14 • Apr 10, 2014 CHICAGO—Visiting for the first time in his young life, 9-year-old Jacob Tendering was reportedly shown the field where his favorite team, the Chicago Cubs, suck every home…
