The phrase “The Ugly American” may have originated with Constantino Arias’ photo of the same name, showing a 1950s Batista-era tourist in Havana, Cuba. But the term is best known for the 1958 fictionalized political science novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer which graphically describes the failures of the U.S. diplomatic corps in Southeast Asia. In 1967…
Penny Chenery followed in the footsteps of figures like Lucille Markey of Calumet Farm; Elizabeth Arden Graham of Maine Chance Farm; and Allaire C. duPont, owner of the champion gelding Kelso, all members of the limited circle of thoroughbred racing’s well-known women. But Chenery was lucky enough to own Secretariat, arguably the greatest race horse…
If you judged fresh cherries only by he ones sold in supermarkets, you’d conclude that all cherries are ripe, good-looking and healthy. But the cherries sold in supermarkets aren’t a representative sample; they represent the very best, not a random sample of all cherries growing on the trees. It’s an example of selection bias, an…
The Owhyee Mountains in southwestern Idaho and eastern Oregon aren’t the product of a single geologic event, or even the same series of events. In the case of the parts of the Owhyees around Silver City, Idaho, it’s more of a damaged geologic layer cake: Cretaceous granodiorite, which penetrates Paleozoic sedimentary rock, all overlain with…
A good teacher can make you think. A great teacher can make you recognize that your very assumptions may be wrong. By that measure, Doug Dowd was a great teacher. You’ve probably never heard of Dowd; history has kind of passed him by. But he was a prominent critic of capitalism, especially unrestrained capitalism, and…
WC is not a climatologist. You already knew that. But WC has read pretty widely in anthropogenic climate change. And it seems pretty clear that humankind is making tropical cyclones – hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons – worse, in at least four different ways. More Heat for a Heat Engine. Cyclones are heat engines. The mechanism…
A young man is wheeled into surgery on a gurney. He was gravely injured in an auto accident that killed his father. The young man is transferred to the operating table and prepped for emergency surgery. The surgeon leans over the young man and gasps in dismay, “Oh, my son, what have the done to you?”…
WC wants his fellow coffee junkies to understand just how serious this is: coffee, the single best reason for getting out of bed in the morning, is at grave risk from climate change. Coffee, especially arabica coffee, is fussy about where it will grow and what climatic conditions it will tolerate. The other species, robusta, is a…
Birding is harder in the fall. A lot of birds look very different in the autumn; Blackpoll Warblers, for example, look like completely different species. Yes, that really is the same bird species. But the juveniles are even worse. Hatch years birds may not look anything like their parents. And among hatch year birds, sparrows…
Among WC’s very favorite live bands would be Hot Club of Cowtown. WC saw them live for the first time as a part of Mountain Stage’s first show in Fairbanks back in 2012. They blew the crowd away. At the time, WC called them “the offspring of Django Reinhard and The Texas Playboys.” They were…
There had been this aspen tree leaning over the driveway at WC’s house in Fairbanks for some months. It wasn’t an alarming lean; just a bit of an angle. But there were dead branches in top of the tree, that slight lean was towards the house and Mrs. WC had been after WC to do…
In comparison to the tannin-stained Sandhill Cranes of Alaska, Idaho’s breeding population is immaculate. They seem just a bit smaller, too. But they still offer the same crane music that heralds autumn. WC is mostly off the intertubes this weekend, chasing birds and dodging heat waves.
