WC received an advance copy of Matthew Cobb’s As Gods: A Moral History of the Genetic Age, to be published November 15, 2022. It seems an especially good book to review on Hallowe’en. WC does do book reviews: it says so right on the Wickersham’s Conscience home page. But it has been a while. The…
You won’t find Lime, Oregon on a map; at least not one published in the last forty years. Lime isn’t even a ghost town; it’s obliterated, along with the cement plant that was Lime’s reason for existence. Today, Lime is a wide spot in a side road off Interstate 84, not too far from Baker…
This is a unique and fascinating species, and WC would like to have much better photos of it. It’s an argument for a return trip to the Galápagos Islands. Swallow-tailed Gulls are a near-endemic to the Galapagos, 99% of the population breeds there. Outside of breeding season this is a pelagic species, sometimes found 500…
Long-time readers will recall WC, asked the seemingly simple question of how many different bird species he had photographed, has been struggling for the last four years to provide an answer. WC, as recently as July of this year, had the illusion he was making progress. Then the American Ornithological Society released the latest update…
While the State of Idaho has many fine points, it does not have glaciers worthy of the name. It has had them in the past, and they did some dramatic alteration of the terrain, but those glaciers are long gone. While the ice may have all melted, the geologic signatures of glaciers are everywhere. Among…
Do you think that Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election was legitimate or not legitimate? – Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Yes No Legitimate 64% 25% 96% 62% 57% 71% 75% 51% Not legitimate 29 66 3 28 34 24 21 41 DK/NA 7 9 1 10 9 5 4 8 Quinnipiac…
In 1991, WC was trapped in a broken elevator in his office building with a woman who was obsessed with the alleged witchcraft in a series of Junior High School language arts books recently adopted by the local school district. “Do you know,” she told WC, “That if you photocopy the illustration at pages 119-120,…
The Macaws, spread across three or four genera, are the largest members of the New World parrot family, the Psittacidae. There are at least seventeen Macaw species, but WC has only photographed a few of them. In an egregious instance of the Magpie Principle, here are four of those species. The etymology of “macaw” is…
WC had his follow up examination with his orthopedic surgeon recently, including follow up x-rays of the “appliance” now residing in WC’s right knee. At the risk of over-sharing, WC offers this update. These are iPhone photographs of the doctor’s computer screen, and aren’t ideal. WC and his phone are reflected in the background. You…
If you want a way to annoy a birder, refer to gulls as “seagulls.” Many species of gull never get any where near salt water at any time of their lives. The Andean Gull is an extreme example of just how misleading “seagull” can be. Andean Gulls, across much of their range, spend their lives…
This is an adaptation of a letter that WC’s buddy David James sent to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, back in WC’s hometown. He asks two questions that are something every candidate for public office should be required to answer. WC reproduces and adapts James’ letter here, with his permission. It’s election season, and newspapers will…
October is Bat Appreciation Month, so WC is here with a selection of the other flying vertebrates. There are at least 1,400 species of bats world wide, filling a number of ecological niches, almost all of them nocturnal. Photographing them is a real challenge. But here’s a sampler. At higher altitudes, where it cools down…
Ward Merdes is kind of a buddy of WC’s. Which makes this blog post a little more sad. Sure, Ward did some stupid stuff but his professional career may be over and it’s hard to see anything but bankruptcy in his future. As the title of this post suggests, the problem was really created by…
One of the weirdest things about American politics is the virtual canonization of crooked politicians when they die. America did it with Dick Nixon. If you listened to the eulogies at Nixon’s funeral, you’d never have guessed he resigned in disgrace, and avoided a long prison sentence only by accepting a blanket pardon from President…
When New England fisherman grossly overfished cod to the edge of extinction, they finally did the sensible thing and completely closed down the cod fishery in the North Atlantic. The complete closure was very hard on the New England fishing industry; fisherman went bankrupt, communities were economically injured and the bitterness lasted a long time.…
The place name “Secesh,” including the lovely Secesh River in central Idaho, has a romantic, American Indian sound to it. Unfortunately, it’s short for “secessionist,” and a name given by refugees from the South in the American Civil War. The territorial history of Idaho reads as a struggle between Federal, pro-Union appointed officials and popularly…
In 1997, the Band-tailed Gull was split into two species, Olrog’s Gull and Belcher’s Gull. Olrog’s is an Atlantic coastal species of South America; WC has never seen it. Belcher’s, by contrast, is endemic to the part of the Pacific Coast of South America most heavily influenced by the Humboldt Current roughly from Northern Peru…
Pronghorn were an unexpected treat when WC started hanging around the Intermountain West. And WC still cannot resist photographing them when there’s an opportunity. Here are a few shots from this year. Because you can never have too many photos of Turbo Speed Goats. Remember, they are not antelopes, and are only distantly related to…
The Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) appears to have been an unqualified success. Based on preliminary analysis of the orbit of Dimorphos, the asteroid that was the target of NASA’s satellite, Dimorphos’ orbit was significantly altered. Before DART, Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos took 11 hours and 55 minutes; post-impact, it’s down to 11 hours and…
(This is a part of an eclectic, sometime series on artists WC has known and doesn’t want forgotten. The first post in this series was on Steve Goodman. The second was on Sir Terry Pratchett. WC has also written about Laura Nyro, Bill Berry, Jo Ann Wold and Boudleaux and Felice Bryant. Here’s another wonderful…
On February 20, 1943, at about 4:00 PM local time, a Mexican corn farmer named Dionisio Pulido was clearing shrubbery in his fields when a large crack opened in the ground. Suddenly, the ground nearby swelled upward and formed a fissure between 2 and 2.5 meters across. Pulido reported that he heard hissing sounds, and…
Readers ask why WC “picks on Wasilla.” That would be because no other community WC knows is as egregiously, consistently and pridefully stupid as Wasilla. If you think WC is exaggerating, let’s have a look at the latest folly to emerge from the Matanuska-Susitna Valley. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly voted October 4, 2022 to ban…
This post is for Ron Dudley, retired biology teacher,, astonishingly good bird photographer and, WC is pleased to to report, a good friend of WC’s. Ron is recovering from surgery at present, and this blog post is WC’s way of wishing him a speedy recovery. Most parasites are SLiPs. That is, they are Simple Lifecycle…
Dolphin Gulls are one of the few bird species on the planet for which WC can say, with some confidence, that you aren’t likely to confuse it with any other species. An oversize, bulbous, bright red-orange bill, bright red-orange legs, uniform gray head and chest, darker gray mantle and black back, with an electric yellow…
So there’s this: The “storm of the century” as it is being called is unfortunately another one of many examples of how the government engineers weather to completely destroy places and as always they will use predictive programming to show you they’re going to do it in advance. The ‘Storm Of The Century’ movie by…
It seems to have been mostly the late George Harrison’s idea. He bounced that idea off of Jeff Lynne, co-founder of Electric Light Orchestra, who had recently completed production Harrison’s 11th solo album, Cloud Nine. With Orbison sitting in, they had recorded a new single for the B-side of a single from Harrison’s album. That…
Yes, as WC has noted earlier, it would take a multi-volume encyclopedia-length effort to sort out Donald Trump’s many crimes, so WC proposes to focus on just the most recent ones. In addition to those involving the presence of presidential records and classified documents at Mar-a-lago, Trump’s tasteless offense to architecture in Palm Beach, Florida,…
In the last month, Typhoon Merton has made an unprecedented, devastating run into the Bering Sea. Hurricane Iona did severe damage to Canada’s Maritime provinces. And Hurricane Ian has battered Florida as one of the worst storms in that state’s long history with hurricanes. It’s the consensus among meteorologists that the remarkable severity of these…
Scott Peak is the easternmost glaciated peak in the Denali Massif in central Alaska. At 8,800 feet, it’s not a huge challenging climb, but it was the site of a long series of unsuccessful climbing attempts by WC in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Scott Peak is flanked by six different glaciers. The best…
In August 1984, WC’s ex-wife SAS was working as a commodities trader on the fifth floor of the Key Bank Building in downtown Fairbanks. The New York commodities desks open at 9:00 AM Eastern time, so she was at work on August 16, 1984 at 5:24 AM Alaska time when she heard a very loud…
Wickersham's Conscience 
You must be logged in to post a comment.