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…
This post is updated with new stupid things! This post is dedicated to WC’s birding buddy, D.H., America’s Tallest Birder. He used to be a Republican, but folks like this have changed his mind. WC wrote this post back in June but held off posting it. Greene appears to be an attention-seeker, inclined to say…
They call it “Ransomware-as-a-Service” (“RaaS”). But it’s really a franchise. A criminal franchise, but a franchise nonetheless. It works like this: the Franchisor develops a suite of tools to hack into a victim’s computer systems, steal by downloading all of the data and then encrypt all of the data found there. The victim can no…
Several readers have asked WC what he thinks is at the heart of all the problems facing America. It’s more than one thing, of course. But with this post, WC introduces a new, semi-regular series, using only photographs to illustrate the problem. When ignorance is held out as desirable, by persons in authority, yeah, it’s…
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a…
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…
Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal might be the most famous sustained pice of satire in the English language. But it provides the seed for a solution to the problem Idaho and other states are suffering as the Delta variant of the COVID-19 coronavirus packs our health care facilities with critically ill unvaccinated and unmasked citizens.…
As usual, Pratchett got it exactly right. In Good Omens, Crowley, a demon,1 actually ready the warranty that came with his personal computer: Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn’t work, 2) didn’t do what the expensive advertisement said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighbourhood, 4) and in…
WC has written about the Dunning-Kruger Effect several times before. The thesis is simple: If you are dumb enough, you don’t know how dumb you are. The implications are not simple, and if you live in a democracy, the implications are pretty concerning. Benjamin Lyons et al. have taken the implications one step further and…
The big lotteries are best understood as a voluntary tax on the statistically challenged. PowerBall is the biggest of the big lotteries, with 45 states and several Canadian provinces participating. PowerBall jackpots are sometimes in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Of course, your chances of winning are so vanishingly small as to be non-existent.…
The Idaho State Legislature has its collective panties in a wad over sex education in the schools. Again. There’s a bill pending that would change school sex education classes from “opt-out” to “opt-in.” Idaho has an above-average teen pregnancy rate – about 16 births per 1,000 teen girls according to the CDC. It has a…
For WC, Wasilla was always the place you had to go through to drive between Fairbanks and Anchorage. It seemed inoffensive enough. True, there would be traffic jams that sometimes slowed Parks Highway traffic to a crawl. But otherwise, it seemed inoffensive enough, in a bedroom-burb, multiple-strip mall kind of way. But why is it…
It’s been a while since WC wrote a screed, a phillipic, a rant. It’s time to fix that. The Idaho Statesman is the principal daily newspaper in the Treasure Valley here in southwest Idaho, including Boise. It’s part of the McClatchy Group, which filed Chapter 11 in February last year. The newspaper has driven its…
Part of the reason many conspiracy theory promoters act as they do is they get a thrill, a rush, out of the possibility of having secret knowledge, of being special by “knowing” something others do not. Never mind that the conspiracy may be wildly improbable, self-contradictory or even laughable. The buzz is the important thing.1…
The Anchorage Daily News reports that the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, Alaska’s state-owned development corporation (AIDEA), is conidering spending as much as $20 million to bid on oil leases in Trump’s hastily-organized auction of drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Can we think about this for a moment? Human-generated CO2 is…
WC has very low expectations for the Alaska Legislature, and even lower expectations of its Republican members. The Legislature’s failure to address the economic realities facing Alaska, its support of Gov. Mike Dunleavy and its failure to grow a collective spine have fully justified those sub-basement expectations. The Legislature has exhausted the Constitutional Budget Reserve,…
WC’s adopted home state, Idaho, is embarrassing itself. Idaho already is notorious for spending less on education than any of the other fifty states, excepting only Utah. That’s pretty embarrassing in itself. In 2016, the latest year for which WC can find data, Idaho spent about $7,100 per student. The national average is something like…
The Alaska State Troopers report the successful apprehension of 25-year old Tristen Balthazore, arrested on a warrant for violating the conditions of his probation. Balthazore was captured attempting to escape from a residence on Woodruff Loop. The details are delightful. Apparently, Balthazore attempted his escape through a pet door. He must be a very small…
WC notes that the Last Frontiersman, the newspaper of the Mat-Su Valley, reports the Mat Su Valley had only one COVID-19 positive test the week of July 17. Down the road in Anchorage, by contrast, there were some 59 new cases. It’s bad enough in Anchorage that Mayor Ethan Berkowtiz has issued an executive order…
Dear Idaho Statesman – WC has your renewal notice for the delivered, paper version of the Idaho Statesman. It is, as you know, $1,306.34 for a year, more than $325.00 a quarter. WC recognizes McClatchy is in Chapter 11. WC recognizes advertising income has sharply declined. On the other hand, the newspaper is less than…
Wickersham's Conscience 
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