WC rode the nearly new Tustumena to Kodiak back in 1965, a year after she launched. An amazing 61 years later, she’s still in service. All those years and the rough North Pacific waters in which she sails have taken their toil. The ship’s hull cracked badly enough in 2012 that the Alaska Marine Highway System stopped…
This is what happens to your head if you watch too much Fox News Entertainment. Your head, and especially your brain, shrinks dramatically, as your critical thinking skills, empathy and judgment go unused. The atrophy of those higher cerebral functions causes profound contraction of the cerebellum and skull, and your head ends up looking like…
Warning: If you depend on padlocks for security, this blog post may cause insecurity. Former US Marine Staff Sergeant Trevor McNally has some 7 million internet followers and has amassed more than 2 billion views — that’s Billion with a “b” – just by showing how easy it is to open many common locks by…
The Felon held a cabinet meeting on October 9. You can watch the whole thing if you have a strong stomach. WC parsed about minutes of the Felon’s semi-coherent speechifying at that meeting in an effort to count the number of lies that passed his lips. WC’s effort may have caused permanent brain damage, but…
WC has written at length here about Ammon Bundy, who at this point in his on again/off again martyrdom is a fugitive who has a multi-million dollar judgment against him, an arrest warrant in Ada County, Idaho and a failed bankruptcy in Utah. But readers may recall that Ammon had a brother, Ryan, who joined…
The source of the quotation titling this blog post is uncertain. It was certainly used by Richard Rowland, then-head of Metro Pictures. In Terry Ramsays’ 1926 book, A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture Through 1925 the metaphor was applied to the then-upstart movie studio United Artists and its four founders:…
The photo is not very good. The Rhinos were pretty far away and the heat waves from the crater floor were pretty severe. But you can see the animals are Rhinos, grazing on the grasses that cover most of the crater floor. Africa boasted two species of Rhinoceros as recently as the turn of the…
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed the U.S. Attorney for Utah to dismiss criminal charges against plastic surgeon and fraudster Dr. Michael Kirk Moore. The evidence is undisputed that Moore issued at least 1,937 completely fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination certificates. Instead of administering the COVID-19 vaccinations provided by the U.S., Moore threw them away. Sometimes…
Bitcoin mining – it doesn’t involve coins and there’s no mining – might be the stupidest use of technology yet conceived. It’s worse than burning money; at least burning money generates some heat on a cold winter night. Bitcoin mining is simply running very complicated, nearly purposeless programs on hundreds – thousands – of computers…
An updated study estimates that ongoing permafrost melt – caused by anthropogenic climate change – will cost Alaska $37 billion to $51 billion in the next 25 years. The update roughly doubles the estimates in an earlier 2023 study. This isn’t some wild-eyed group of crazed conservationists; this study looks at what is already happening…
Ordinarily when billionaires call each other names, WC leaves them and their obscene fortunes to all of the bad cess they want. But Bill Gates, formerly the world’s richest man, has called out Elon Musk, currently the world’s richest man, and we should be paying attention to what the co-founder of Microsoft is saying just…
The Anchorage Daily News, without any apparent sense of irony, had three front page stories on Friday morning: A young 16-year old girl dying of an apparent drug overdose in Wasilla, a 17-year old found dead in the passenger seat of a vehicle in Anchorage, and the news that Providence Hospital, Alaska’s largest, would be…
What’s left of the post-Musk Center for Disease Control reports that about 1.3 million American have died from COVID-19. It’s not over yet, either. More than 15 Idahoans have died of the coronavirus in March 2025. WC got his most recent COVID vaccination booster just last week, and there was a waiting line. A lot…
The Idaho Legislature’s Budget Committee rejected $24.6 million in federal funding to provide tax rebates to Idahoans. The federal funds were part of the Inflation Reduction Act. The funds would have helped Idahoans save money on energy bills, upgrade to clean energy equipment and improve energy efficiency and reduce indoor and outdoor air pollution. The…
Irish Stand Down seems to be an Irish-American invention. It’s a form of bare knuckles fighting in which two fighters take turns hitting each other until the loser can no longer stand up. No dodging allowed. Just take turns taking punches, thumping each other alongside the head. With no offense to WC’s Irish friends, it’s…
Here’s an exercise for you: in a Google search box, with so-called “artificial intelligence” enabled, type, “How many rocks should I eat each day?” And, at least at the date WC started writing this post, you would still get the answer set out above. The reason you get that answer goes back to 2021, when…
Puritanism.—The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.— H.L. Mencken, “Clinical Notes,” The American Mercury, January 1925 A bill to impose a minimum fine of $300.00 for possession of less than 3 ounces of marijuana was passed by the Idaho State Senate on a vote of 28-7 recently. The bill has already passed the…
Once again, Wasilla, Alaska has generated an irresistible opportunity for comment. Two brothers in Wasilla had pet reptiles: Rickey Lowe, 30, and Tyler Lowe, 33. When Tyler and Ricky quarreled earlier this month, there was a physical altercation. Alcohol was involved, because this is Wasilla. Following the “altercation,” Tyler threw Ricky’s pet alligator outside into…
If anyone tries to tell you that geology has resolved all of the mysteries the rocks present, ask that person to explain the New Madrid Seismic Zone. It’s an area in southeastern Missouri and western Tennessee, in the middle of the North American Plate, that has suffered a series of massive, powerful earthquakes. On the…
This is a new, sometime feature, where WC will share with readers both an especially silly email and WC’s reaction to it. Here’s the email: I read in a Twitter thread that solar panels drain the sun’s energy. Is that true? Let’s think this through. The sun radiates energy in all directions, not just towards…
When Astra’s Rocket 3.0 blew up on the Alaska Pacific Spaceport Complex on Kodiak Island in March 2020, Astra CEO Chris Kemp told news media at the time that the rocket “suffered an anomaly following an otherwise successful day of testing in Kodiak in preparation for a launch this week.”1 Kemp said that the company would…
In 2010, one EPA estimate of the Pebble deposit was $700 billion, or $700 million per year for 100 years State of Alaska v. United States, Case No. 24-396, Complaint, Para. 61 WC isn’t very good at arithmetic, but when you multiply $700 million by 100 you get $70 billion, not $700 billion. It’s also…
Maybe Eagle River is just too close to Wasilla? Maybe it’s something in the air in Wasilla that blows across Knik Arm and infects Eagle River residents? Whatever the cause, sometimes citizens of Eagle River – part of the Municipality of Anchorage – act an awful lot like Sarah Palin’s neighbors. Exhibit A would be…
The Matanuska-Susitna Borough reportedly has suspended its library policy. That policy allowed citizens to recommend books that they think should be removed from the library shelves. The library book policy was suspended when a January 18 meeting “devolved into a shouting match and name-calling.” The news led WC to write a bit of fiction which…
The Mat-Su Borough is the fastest growing – maybe the only growing – part of Alaska. The Borough has a population over 110,000 now, an increase of 23,000 from 2010 to 2022. Outside of the communities of small Wasilla and Palmer, there is no municipal police force. That’s a conscious choice by the Borough government.…
In some cultures, septic tanks are still used for human waste. Eventually they fill up. Then they have to be emptied. In England, in the 1700s, the septic tanks were called dunnikins or dunnykins (back then, spelling was optional). The guys who cleaned them out were called dunnikin divers. It seems like the perfect metaphor…
St. Luke’s Health Care Systems obtained a jury verdict for defamation against Ammon Bundy for $17 million. Three St. Luke’s employees have a money judgment for an additional $24 million. St. Luke’s is setting about collecting its judgment. The thing about fraudsters is, that by definition, they are unlikely to admit that, “Yeah, I sold…
It’s not news that Twitter was hacked in 2022 – pre-Musk – and some 4.4 million email addresses and telephone numbers were compromised. Now truly massive stolen data sets from the Twitter hack are appearing for sale on the Dark Web. The data sets themselves aren’t especially revealing in isolation and on an individual basis,…
Three physicians, two from Washington and one from Idaho, face discipline proceedings by the Washington Medical Commission for gross misconduct during the COVID pandemic. Utterly reprehensible lies about COVID vaccines, the efficacy of face masks and the effectiveness of ivermectin as a treatment for the disease. Drs. Cole, Wilkerson and Eggleston allegedly killed their patients…
In the Desertby Stephen Crane In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said, “Is it good, friend?” “It is bitter—bitter,” he answered; “But I like it “Because it is bitter, “And because it is my heart.” It took no great skill to see this coming. The far…
Wickersham's Conscience 
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