Even for the shortest month, February seems to have been a short month. But even with just 28 days, we’ve reached the end of them, so it’s time for WC to have a look back at stuff that didn’t get written, stuff that shouldn’t have happened and stuff involving the Magpie Principle. Rest assured, Craig,…
WC is being deliberately vague in this post about where and when the events reported here occurred, and has altered the facts slightly to make the players difficult to identify. Their identities aren’t the point of the post. It wasn’t baby seals; it was baby sea otters, not that that’s any better. But, yes, an…
Alaska state Rep. David Eastman (R, Wasilla, of course) has always been a racist, misogynist, oath-breaking jerk. But now he can add hypocrisy to his list of character traits. Negative character traits are the only kind Eastman has. Which qualifies him to be a nominee for Wickersham’s Conscience 2023 Hypocrite of the Year. If you…
Another spectacular and improbable-looking bird, a sister species to last week’s Tufted Puffin, although more closely related to the Atlantic Puffin than the Tufted. The Horned Puffin”s range overlaps with the Tufted’s, but the Tufted’s is more extensive, particularly along the Oregon and California coast. Like the Tufted Puffin, the Horned Puffin is a pelagic…
Stupidity is dangerous. And sometimes legislators do things that are so stupid that they can only serve as a horrible warning to others. Two members of the Idaho Legislature, where there is more than few poster children for the Dunning-Kruger Effect, recently demonstrated these principles. Sen. Tammy Nichols (R, Middleton) and Rep. Judy Boyle (R,…
Readers sometimes criticize WC for writing mostly about bad news. It’s a fair criticism but, on the other hand, some weeks it’s mostly bad news. But there is some encouraging news on getting the U.S. just a little greener. The good news is that it’s now less expensive to build solar and wind turbine green…
WC is starting a new sometime series of blog posts that ask rhetorical – and usually unanswerable – questions. When did compulsive lying about your credentials become a Republican qualification? Did it start when Donald Trump, when in one of his first public comments after being sworn in as President, claimed to have had the…
The title to this post is a line from one of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe‘s best known poems, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” The poem is best known in the United States from the early Walt Disney cartoon, Fantasia, when Mickey Mouse, as the sorcerer’s apprentice, has a magic spell get out of control. The title is…
A very good friend of WC’s recently offered some mild criticism of collective nouns, specifically “a murder of crows.” WC’s friend offered the criticism in the context of his excellent photos of American Crows with shadows suggesting prison bars. WC determined to respond with a discussion of the definitive treatment of collective nouns, James Lipton’s…
Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News is headed for trial in a couple of months. Dominon’s case for liability is very strong, and the lawyering by Dominion is top notch. Dominion’s decision to seek summary judgment against the Fox defendants means that its documents seeking summary judgment are now public record, at least…
WC had originally intended to move to Terns after exhausting WC’s photos of gulls. But after nineteen weeks of Larids, it seemed like a better idea to take a break and visit another family of seabirds, the Alcids. Alcids are a family of excessively marine, diving seabirds that swim underwater using their wings as paddles.…
WC was able to challenge Geology 101 – 103 and so missed the introductory geology courses at the University of Oregon, derisively called “Rocks for Jocks.” “Challenge”? Maybe that’s no longer a thing. But back in the late Pliocene, when WC was an undergraduate, you could meet the course requirements of any entry level science…
One of the benefits of moving from Fairbanks, Alaska to Boise, Idaho is the much greater variety of winter avifauna. There are other benefits, to be sure, but a Christmas Bird Count in Boise will turn up a hundred or more species; in Fairbanks, in a really good year, there might be 25. In celebration…
You’ve probably never heard of Thomas Lloyd, Billy Taylor, Charley McConagall or Pete Anderson. They were gold miners, who had followed the gold rush to Fairbanks, Alaska in 1903. Gold miners in Alaska in the 1900s were pretty tough. Certainly tougher than east coast poseurs like Dr. Frederick Cook, a man who didn’t climb Denali…
Coda: (figuratively) A conclusion (of a statement or event, for example), final portion, tail end. Wiktionary, “Coda“ The thing about Donald Trump is that it is always about Donald Trump. Not the country that, as President, he swore to defend. Not the voters who made him president. Not the political party he was supposed to lead.…
It was bad enough when Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy (R, Big Oil) would balance Alaska’s budgets using improbably high crude oil prices. Alaska’s state budget is funded, directly or indirectly, by crude oil. Using high crude oil prices makes the effort so much easier, even if doing so has exhausted the remainder of Alaska’s budget…
The Thacker Pass Lithium Mine would be located in north central Nevada, the largest lithium mine in the United States, and would produce about a quarter of the lithium that the United States needs. The entirety of the mine is on federal land administered by the Bureau of Land Management. It’s undeniably big: when fully…
A final gull,1 and the only Asiatic species WC will describe. The Brown-headed Gull breeds at high elevations, between 3,000 meters and at least 4,500 meters from Turkestan to west China and south to the Pamirs. It’s probably most common in Tibet. The species winters on coasts of India, north Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia,…
Karlee Besse, an accountant in British Colombia, recently lost her wrongful termination claim against her former employer in Canada. Instead, the judge ordered her to pay back her former employer, Reach CPA, for “engaging in time theft.” The outcome wouldn’t have been possible but for software her former employer installed on her computer. It’s a kind of…
The most powerful earthquake to strike Turkey in the last hundred years has caused incredible damage and loss of life in southern Turkey and Syria. It’s instructive to look at the underlying geology, because it has important lessons for folks living along the San Andreas Fault. The earthquake and aftershocks are along the East Anatolian…
WC’s mailbag is bulging, and includes several followup emails asking why WC hasn’t responded to earlier emails. There’s the usual collection of threats, obscenity-laced criticism, inquiries far beyond WC’s pay grade and implied questions. WC has selected a few to answer. Why are you picking on skunks, rabid or otherwise?WC compared U.S. Rep. George Santos…
A philippic is “a fiery, damning speech, or tirade, delivered to condemn a particular political actor.” The best known philippic is Paul Simon’s song of the same name. WC can’t pretend to lyricism, but let’s examine the Republican-controlled, Idaho Legislature’s treatment of children. WC has no children. But WC has served as guardian ad litem…
Sometimes it seems to WC he has been fighting Pebble Mine forever. But it’s only been 21 years. As has been reported here before, it’s the wrong mine, in the wrong kind of ore in the wrong place. It also seems to WC that the mine project has been “killed” at least ten times, but…
Okay, technically this is a matter of geomorphology, but however you style it, arctic ponds and lakes are vanishing and it’s a real concern. As anyone who has tried to walk across arctic and subarctic tundra can tell you, it a sloppy wet business. In fact, ponds and lakes constitute 20–40% of Arctic lowlands, the…
As WC has noted several times, Larids, the gulls and terns, are a favorite. And among the Larids, Sabine’s Gull has to be one of the top birds, even though WC has only seen them a few times. This is a beautiful species, elegant in flight and weird enough to otherwise appeal to WC. This…
Admittedly WC is looking at this from a considerable distance. And WC is from Fairbanks, which marks WC as a rube in the minds of most Anchoragites. But, seriously, the administration of Municipality of Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson is a four alarm dumpster fire.1 Bronson was elected Mayor in 2021, defeating Assemblymember (and now state…
WC briefly noted earlier that the California Bar Association had finally taken action against John Eastman. The Bar’s complaint has since been made public. WC has read it. And it is devastating. Eastman will doubtless fight the Bar’s effort a long time, but the undisputed evidence – the facts in the public record already –…
After a delightful hot springs soak, WC and Mrs. WC wandered up the Middle Fork of the Payette River, past Crouch, Idaho, looking for birds, mammals and critters of that ilk. Birding was a little slow, although we did see a small flock of Clark’s Nutcrackers. But the most notable success was elk. Elk are…
Wickersham's Conscience 