Defendants force Apple to engage in a continual arms race: Even as Apple develops solutions and enhances the security of its devices, Defendants are constantly updating their malware and exploits to overcome Apple’s own security upgrades. Complaint, Apple, Inc. v. NSO Group Technologies, Ltd. et al., Par. 60 at page 16. WC was first involved…
Back when WC was a sullen teenager, he worked one summer on the University of Alaska Institute of Marine Science’s R/V Acona, a research ship. In the Acona’s skiff, we made a practice run northwards up Gastineau Channel to Auke Bay, measuring water depth and sampling bottom sediments. Today, some 54 years later, much of…
Alaskana / Commentary / Dunleavy / Idaho / Politics
Mercifully, we are through November, which seemed to have more than the usual number of disasters, acquittals of the guilty, executions of the innocent and appalling posturings by politicians. Ugh. Regardless, it’s time for a look back at things WC didn’t write about, things that need followup and matters here only because of the Magpie…
What H. Rap Brown actually said, in his 1967 speech in Washington, D.C. was “Violence is a part of America’s culture. It is as American as cherry pie.” Brown was speaking to violence against African-Americans, and as the recent trial for the homicide of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia has demonstrated, not much has changed. Whether…
As 2021 mercifully grinds and lurches towards an end – at least a chronological end – we’re approaching the time for WC’s annual Hypocrite of the Year Award. The recipient is selected by WC’s readers from among an impressive list of egregiously hypocritical political leaders. Past winners of this dubious honor have included The Dirty 13, Captain…
(Just to be clear, all of the photos posted in Bird of the Week were taken by WC. There have been questions. But that’s the whole point of Bird of the Week. At least for WC.) A smaller member of the blue-eyed shag clade, with a shorter bill and more extensive white flanks than its…
Today is Native American Heritage Day, a Congress-created memorial day since 2008. Setting it on Black Friday was either oversight, cynicism or expediency, you choose. To acknowledge this year’s Native American Heritage Day, WC wants to report briefly on the history of the Pribilof Island people, the Unangax̂. The Pribilof Islands, “discovered” by an employee…
Since he was just a pup, about 30-45 minutes after wolfing down a Thanksgiving turkey dinner, WC would be asleep on the couch. In the late 1970′s, a physiologist who was WC’s Thanksgiving guest explained it as a reaction to all of the tryptophan in turkey meat. Just before he dropped off to sleep. As…
Beringia is a term used for the area where the vanished Ice Age land bridge existed, connecting Asia and North America, now drowned under the Bering Sea. It’s also applied to the region’s shores and islands today. The four (possibly five) subspecies of Rock Sandpiper all breed in Beringia. One such subspecies, ptilocnemis, breeds on…
WC can’t complain. Since law school, it’s been an indoor job, out of the weather, with pretty good pay. WC has been lucky in many ways. Not everyone is so fortunate. America has an underclass, folks trapped in a cycle of misery. People who are trapped working two jobs, both mind-numbingly boring, and still barely…
The menu under the banner photo on the Home Page has a menu for Bird Photography. The photos there have (finally) been updated. Nothing particularly fancy, but a spot of color to brighten up the weeks before solstice. WC will endeavor to remember to update it more often.
Alaska gubernatorial candidates Les Gara (D) and Bill Walker (I) held a debate last week. Gara, a long-time member of the Alaska Legislature, and Walker, former governor and former Mayor of Valdez, appeared before the Alaska Municipal League. The AML is a voluntary association of many of Alaska’s municipalities – towns, cities and boroughs. It…
U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (R., Arizona) tweeted out an altered anime cartoon that showed Rep. Gosar using swords to cut off the head of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., New York). The same altered cartoon showed Rep. Gosar attacking President Biden with those swords. The U.S. House of Representatives has censured Rep. Gosar for his…
(In most of these photos, the Polar Star, our ship, is in the background. The thing about traveling in groups on ships is that it can be terribly difficult to find photo angles that capture the subject but don’t include people or the ship. In this instance, the ship is in the background of most…
There is increasing evidence that solar superflares are more common and much more severe than we thought. Superflares are events triggered when our sun produces an immense flare of particles and radiation, orders of magnitude greater than normal. Superflares matter because when that energy strikes the Earth’s magnetosphere, it can wreak pure havoc on our…
The Republican majority – excepting its extreme, right wingnuts – of the Idaho Legislature is congratulating itself on censuring Rep. Priscilla Giddings (R, White Bird) and kicking her off of House Commerce and Human Resources Committee. That’s the Idaho House legislative committee in charge of, among other things, supervising state employees. WC has written about…
But Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President. He retains the right to assert that his records are privileged, but the incumbent President “is not constitutionally obliged to honor” that assertion. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, Memorandum Decision, Trump v. Thompson, Civil Action No. 21-cv-2769 (TSC), p. 18. Stop WC if you’ve heard…
It’s been too long since WC has offered a really radical suggestions here at Wickersham’s Conscience. That’s about to change. We don’t need any more gold mines. The chief problem with gold mining is that all the rich deposits of gold have been exhausted. During the early days of the California Gold Rush, miners picked…
Ingenuity was an afterthought, at most an experiment approved by doubtful NASA brass, a proof of concept by a few smart NASA engineers. It’s become the little helicopter that could. An unqualified success that has exceeded even the most optimistic hopes of its designers by orders of magnitude. Ingenuity, of course, was the specially-designed helicopter…
WC hasn’t forgotten the annual process of selecting a hypocrite of the year. So far there are two nominees: the North Carolina Republican Party and the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops. But the last nomination was months ago. WC presents a new candidate here. (If you have a candidate for this important award, name your…
The Magellanic Cormorant, a/k/a Rock Shag, is another cormorant species recently shifted from the genus Phalacrocorax to the genus Leucocarbo. This species’ range overlaps with last week’s Imperial Shag and, like the Imperial, this species is endemic to Patagonia. This is a smallish cormorant, about two-thirds the size and half the weight of the Imperial…
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R, Texas), a man on the shortlist for Most Embarrassingly Ignorant Man in America, recently tweeted: Background: Big Bird, the iconic Sesame Street character, has been urging children get vaccinations since at least 1972. Big Bird’s tweet last week about the recently-approved COVID-19 vaccination for children was just the most recent…
There will likely be no new bird photos for a few weeks. WC is going through a long-delayed, highly necessary housecleaning. This all started when Apple, Inc. killed Aperture in 2014. Aperture was and remains the single best digital asset management (“DAM”) tool on the Mac platform.1 It has features that are still missing in…
Most of us have heard the tale in one form or another.1 WC first heard it in Joe Oden’s AP Calculus class, his senior year in high school. An Indian philosopher invents the game of chess, and demonstrates it to his emperor. The emperor is so impressed he tells the philosopher to name his own…
You can certainly make a case that listening to the news is bad for you. Of course, it’s even easier to make the case that not listening to the news is even worse for you. But in the face of the unrelenting pressure of the world’s woes, mostly involving humans misbehaving, there is genuine comfort…
There are two recent studies, one out of Michigan and a more recent one out of Iowa, showing that White-tailed Deer in those states have high levels of antibodies for COVID-19. That strongly implies a human-to-deer jump of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 in humans, SARS-CoV-2, as well as transmission between deer. In the Michigan…
Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy issued an Administrative Order November 2 which provided, among other things, [T]he Dunleavy Administration is ordering: 1. The Attorney General to review any federal vaccine mandate issued by the Biden Administration and determine whether there are legal grounds to challenge such mandates in court. 2. To the extent allowable by law,…
WC hasn’t exhausted the Icterids, but after 18 weeks of Icterids, WC is exhausted with Icterids. So the bird of the week will take a pretty dramatic change in bird families, and jump to the Cormorants, a family of diving birds with some seven genuses and something like 40 species. Taxonomy of the Cormorants and…
Boise, Idaho is officially classified as having the Køppen Climate Classification subtype “Csb,” Mediterranean Climate. That means there’s not a lot of rain, although it isn’t a desert landscape. In fact, it’s raining as WC writes this blog post. And one of the delights of rain here in the North End of Boise is that it…
When dragons belch and hippos fleeMy thoughts, Ankh-Morpork, are of theeLet others boast of martial dashFor we have boldly fought with cashWe own all your helmets, we own all your shoesWe own all your generals – touch us and you’ll lose. Morporkia! Morporkia!Morporkia owns the day!We can rule you wholesaleTouch us and you’ll pay. –…
We’re lunaticsWith microchipsEmbedded in our butts Capitol Steps, “Loonies of the Right,” 2002 WC encountered a conspiracy theory recently that links two crises facing the world today: public resistance to the COVID-19 vaccines and the world-wide microchip shortage. The conspiracy theory proposes that there is a shortage of chips because the chips are all being…
Jamie Lauren Keiles recently has a long feature story in the New York Times on his love of motorcycles and his first trip to Sturgis, South Dakota for the gigantic motorcycle rally there. That story and a recent conversation with a friend brought to mind an older blog post which explains, far better than Mr.…
So much for October. WC is still trying to recover from a sugar-rush haze that’s a consequence of left over Hallowe’en candy. But here’s the usual month-end summary of followup, overlooked and discarded info that’s made its way into WC’s short-term attention span. As ever, no journalism has been committed in writing this blog post.…
There is a tradition in Boise of a pretty much over the top Hallowe’en along Harrison Boulevard in the North End. In normal years, the road is closed to accommodate the crowds of trick or treaters and folks looking at the yard decorations. The pandemic pretty much shut the event down last year. For 2021,…
Yes, another blackbird, this one found in eastern South America, in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil. The Chopi Blackbird gets its name for its primary call, a sharp, shrill “Shop-WEE!” which it gives frequently. Like its cousin, the Scarlet-headed Blackbird, it is monotypic, the only species in its genus. While it looks like a standard black-colored…
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