Despite the wretched outcome of his wishes for 2010, wishes for 2011, and wishes for 2012, WC will once again set out his wishes for 2013. While it is tempting to moderate those wishes, WC is not inclined to lower his expectations in the hope of greater success. So here they are: WC’s wishes for 2013: Overpopulation. Yes. Still…
We lost a lot of great ones this last year. Too many who were important, in one way or another, to WC. Here are notes and links to a few of them. George McGovern, the first presidential candidate for whom WC actively campaigned. An absolutely decent man. WC still wonders who the other vote for…
WC has accused the Alaska Redistricting Board of the worst kind of political gerrymandering, an egregious set of violations of the Alaska Constitution, in adopting each of the redistricting plans developed to date. On December 28, 2012, the Alaska Supreme Court agreed. Basically, the court refused to allow the Redistricting Board to stack the deck.…
However much humankind may injure and maim the planet, we don’t control nature. Nature bats last. WC continues a category of year end reviews introduced last year, noting instances in this calendar year when we’ve had to be reminded of that lesson once again. One of WC’s all-time favorite books is John McPhee’s The Control of Nature (Amazon link).…
WC doesn’t want to shock anyone, but sometimes you really shouldn’t believe things you see on the Intertubes. Seriously, just because it’s on the ‘Net doesn’t mean it’s true. A grain of salt, please. Occam’s Razor, thoroughly applied. A skeptical eye. Critical judgment. Sheesh. The following video is not true. It was a class project to…
Once again, WC opened the year with wishes for the upcoming months. And once again, WC’s wishes and hopes were mostly dashed. But with just a week or so left in 2012, let’s look at the specifics (Predictions in bold face; outcomes indented below): 1. Overpopulation. Among the crises facing the planet is human overpopulation. During 2011,…
The results are in. Austerity, as the solution for economic woes, is an abject failure. The European Union has imposed serious economic austerity measures on five of its member countries: Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Ireland. Here are the results: These are the consequences of fiscal austerity. This is the “solution” that Paul Ryan and…
As WC did in 2009, 2010 and 2011, WC will undertake a brief review of politics in 2012 before we mercifully leave the poor, maimed calendar year behind. Mitt Romney won something, anyway. Poltico gave Romney’s Jeep political spot, claiming Chrysler jobs were to be exported to China, its “Lie of the Year” award. Interestingly, Romney’s political ads swept…
The Smoking Gun has broken the story of a Social Security Administration employee officially reprimanded for recidivist farting. This isn’t a fart joke. This seems to really be happening. There’s a fart log and everything. There are so many things wrong with this story on so many levels that WC is tempted not to even…
WC’s brother gave Mrs. WC a telephoto lens attachment for the her iPhone. This is a photo of the back of the box. Sure, WC’s Chinese is even worse than this English, but then WC doesn’t try to market goods in China with Babblefish translations.
The Big News in sports for 2012 was the NFL’s sudden realization discovery that football is bad for you. Specifically, that serial concussions work terrible damage to the brains of its athletes. Not that the NFL is actually admitting anything; there are lawsuits, after all, and we can’t have any damaging admissions. The NFL is…
All the best to you in the holiday season and the new year.
Here’s a brief look at four of the many species of birds that breed in Alaska, but winter in California. You’ll agree, WC thinks, it is a sensible approach. We’ll start with the American Pipit. This handsome songbird breeds on the alpine slopes in Alaska. It uses a wide variety of winter ranges, including the…
WC was lucky enough to study British and American Rhetoric under the late Professor Bower Aly. Although WC didn’t think it was good luck at the time. For Professor Aly, context was everything, and a quotation out of context invariably resulted in an assignment to describe, with suitable footnotes and a bibliography, the full context…
As WC listened to NRA flak and alleged human being Wayne LaPierre mouth the NRA’s idiot ideas yesterday, WC wondered how much the guy had to be paid to sell his soul. In the case of LaPierre, he got a pretty good price for hawking his pitiful, tattered humanity. About $971,000 in 2010, according to…
Yesterday was Winter Solstice. In Fairbanks, that meant 3 hours and 42 minutes when the sun was above the horizon. This year it also meant 44 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. At solar noon (12:49 PM ADST), WC climbed up on a roof downtown for a photo up the Chena River. A strong inversion, plainly visible…
WC admits the title is ripped off from the original Wizard of Id cartoon, back when Johnny Hart still drew it. “The peasants are revolting.” But the teabaggers demonstrated just how far out of touch they are with America and the economy. Spare WC all of the “Plan B” jokes. The Republicans have packed their…
Mrs. WC forwarded this slightly hysterical graphic from one of her Twitter acquaintances. Wuss. Wimp. WC would sneer at your sissiness, but his face is frozen. Keep warm, folks. And be careful in the ice fog.
An existential threat is a threat which challenges or endangers the very existence of the person who is threatened. It’s a pretentious word for a kind of solemn navel-gazing that WC finds annoying. Commentators are claiming that President Obama’s re-election is an existential threat to the Republican Party. No. It’s more accurate to say that…
WC notes with concern recent reports that the Taliban in Pakistan are targeting polio health workers for assassination. Polio is still endemic in Pakistan. The Pakistani government had been in the middle of a three-day vaccination drive targeting high risk areas of the country as part of its effort to immunize millions of children under the…
A large number of Chrisitanist fundamentalists insist upon the literal truth of the Bible, that the world was made sometime around 4004 BC and that anything that contradicts that view is a misinterpretation, a distortion or the work of the devil. Montgomery, in The Rocks Don’t Lie (Amazon link) examines the history of that belief. His…
Vigilance abroad does not require us to abandon our ideals or the rule of law at home. On the contrary, without our principles and without our ideals, we have little that is special or worthy to defend. – Senator Daniel K. Inouye (D, Hawaii) WC believes Senator Inouye to have been the last World War II…
The photo kind of says it all, except that the inversion wasn’t strong enough to make it a lot warmer up on Gilmore Trail. It was about -40 F in the valley; about -30 up on the hillside. You are looking south across the Tanana Valley. The large plume is North Pole Refinery. If there…
. Among all the despicable characters hanging around Washington, D.C., Dick Morris has to be among the worst. You remember Dick Morris. He was The Clinton campaign advisor who, to impress prostitute Sherry Rowlands, invited her to listen in on his telephone conversations with President Clinton. He was fired resigned and has hated the Clintons since.…
We have an untreated disease that is killing 30,000 Americans each year. Today that untreated disease killed 20 young elementary school students in Connecticut. And 8 adults. WC has no words to describe the horror and the sorrow. Or the anger. We call ourselves “exceptional,” but we cannot even have an adult conversation about the existence…
The Alaska Supreme Court decided today in Perotti v. Corrections Corporation of America that a prisoner in a private prison doesn’t have a right to recover damages from the private prison for violation of his or her rights. Bryan Perotti sued Corrections Corporation of America after CCA put him in solitary and, in his view, harassed…
The “war on drugs” has made the United States the country on the planet with the most citizens in prison. Our prison population is through the roof, as WC has shown in earlier blog posts. It’s also costing the federal government and incredible amount of money. That’s $8.5 billion dollars in 2012. That number can…
FRIAR BARNARDINE. Thou hast committed— BARABAS. Fornication: but that was in another country; And besides, the wench is dead. – Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, Act IV The Boy Scouts of America, for decades, refused to perform criminal background checks on their volunteers. It kept inadequate records of volunteers who had abused young boy scouts,…
In theory, if you make a donation to a charity, you get a tax deduction. If you give $10 to, say, the Alaska Conservation Foundation, on your tax return you get to exclude that $10 from your gross income, that amount used to calculate your federal tax payment. But because this is the Internal Revenue…
From the Wunderground forecast for Fairbanks: We’re all tough Alaskans, of course, but it does make you think twice about your weekend plans. Where’s global warming when you really need it?
