When WC was a pup, back in the early part of the Truman Administration, death seems to have been a simpler matter: you were alive or you were dead; there was no middle ground. The extension of lifespan and improvements to medical technology have greatly complicated that simple concept. Where there was black and white,…
Remember the furor when MoveOn.org ran this full-page advertisement in the New York Times back in September 2007? The ad triggered a firestorm of criticism. The Senate passed an amendment to “strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus”. All 49 Republican Senators and 22 Democratic Senators voted in support. Democratic Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Chris…
Today is the 214th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s inauguration as President of the United States. Jefferson’s intelligence, wide-ranging mind and superb writing skills remain untouched among all his successors. President Kennedy, hosting a dinner of United States Nobel Prize winners in 1962, famously said, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of…
Peter Lik boasted recently he had sold one of his photographs for $6.5 million. The claim is unverifiable, and like much of what Lik says and does, may be a lot more about marketing than fact. This is the photo: To WC’s eye, it’s seriously over-saturated, and the sand in the sunlight beam is badly…
The late Jack Vance wrote many fine novels, but the Lyonesse trilogy, written 1983-1989, in WC’s opinion, is the best of his work. And among the great epic fantasy series of all time. Vance’s richly imagined land of Lyonesse and the Elder Isles, the lost islands of fantasy between France and Britain, is alive with magic, vivid…
Back in 1982, the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys published a nice little pamphlet titled Geologic Hazards of the Fairbanks Area. Over the course of a little over 100 pages, the pamphlet assesses geologic risks associated with things like permafrost, erosion, landslides and earthquakes. As a 55-year resident of Fairbanks, WC has seen examples of…
Yes, it’s true. To paraphrase the boys at Car Talk, you’ve wasted another perfectly good month reading Wickersham’s Conscience. It’s already time for another quick recap, a smirking wink at Real Journalism, as WC revisits earlier posts and omitted stories. Sometime this month, the National and Alaska media woke up and discovered that – gasp –…
John Yates was a commercial fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico. He was caught by a National Marine Fisheries Service agent with a large number of under-sized red grouper. The agent measured the fish, segregated the undersized fish and directed Yates not to destroy the fish. When the agent was gone, Yates ordered a crew member…
So Dr. Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon (PhD, Southern Cal, Aerospace Engineering) is revealed as a fraud. Soon, who has the same climatologist credentials as you and WC, has for some years spouted climate trutherism to anyone that would listen. It’s not very good science. But he’s been trundled out at committee hearings and conferences by anti-science…
Wasilla suffered yet another stupid gun injury Saturday. A 4-year old boy was shot in the leg when his mother’s .357 pistol fell out of her purse, struck the ground and fired. The bullet struck the 4-year-old just above the knee. There are so many things wrong in this incident. But let’s focus on the…
WC will be on semi-break the next week or so. It’s not a vacation; it’s more or less the opposite of a vacation. Depending on events, there may or may not be posts. /WC
WC and Mrs. WC were walking the grounds of a lodge less than a quarter mile from SeaTac International Airport. A portion of those grounds are a “recovered” wetland. The “recovery” seems mostly to have involved hauling away a lot of trash, but the result has been an island of habitat in a sea of…
