Nothing but cold and ice

Sorry for being absent. When the blog gets quiet, it’s because something in my life has either gone fantastically well, or horribly awry. Lately, it’s been more of the latter than the former. But I was taught not to complain when things go bad, so I won’t say more about that. I have been spending an awful lot of time out on the snowgo, hunting for a couple of things here and there.

I’ve also been sewing, though I’m embarrassed to show the final product. My aana would be annoyed I didn’t pay more attention when she taught me to sew.

We’ve been gaining daylight.



That wasn't a picture of yours truly, but a buddy of mine. My parka is far prettier. ;)

And the trip to Manly Hotsprings is now especially pretty.



But honestly, you can say that about almost anywhere in the state right now.



I’ve got more science-foo planned; I’m in talks with a grad student in my department about potentially blogging a journal club. Hopefully that’ll pan out.

Anyone know where I can get such awesome facemasks as they're wearing here? I wear a helmet for just riding, but hunting with a helmet on is very stupid. However, I've decided I don't like freezing my face off each time I ride, and most people I know either tough it out by just piling on the scarves or whatever (the frostbite solution) or put up with wearing the helmet (the stupid solution). Kotzebue brand not-freezing-your-face-off sounds especially appealing to me!

Picturesque Copper River

Here's a picture of the copper river outside of chitna, when I went down there this year supposedly to fish. I never really did get a chance, since the water level was all wrong, and I had to go home soon after. But Chitna is a great place. The Chitnites are easy to get along with, there's a great little bar in 'town' (Uncle Tom's), and when things aren't so crowded, its easy to get to talking to people from all over the state. Soon after I took this, I was passed by a guy on a bike who was out sheep hunting south of there, and we got to talking about his trip - he also was unsuccessful in getting any meat that day. For all you transplants to AK, as soon as you're legal, you should go give dipnetting at Chitna a try. It's an experience and a half for most people, and even I find it a whole lot of fun.

I heard it called "Subsistence for College Students" once, and I had to laugh because that isn't so far from the truth!

*Tap Tap* Is this thing on?

Hello!

You might have noticed I've been absent for a little bit again. I was out in the field again, wrapping up the season with some various and sundry work. I've run into a tiny snag in my personal life, and although I'll try to have some posts out, it'll definitely be fewer and longer between posts until everything is peachy again.

In the interim, here's a moose staring at you.

Dr Erich Follmann

Yesterday, at 8:30am, Dr. Erich Follmann passed on. Erich was a superior friend, colleague, teacher and scientist, and is already sorely missed. He was a warm, inherently likeable man, known for being level-headed and under-spoken. It is hard to find someone who would speak a word of ill against him, as he was not the sort to make enemies. I could learn so much about how he dealt with people.

Though sometimes he felt a bit like an anachronism, I soon found that it was because I failed to see the subtlety of his view of scientific topics. His understanding of wildlife diseases and epidemiology was impressively broad, and he helped greatly deepen our understanding of Rabies in the wild. He passed on so much knowledge to the newest generation of wildlife biologists through thoughtful, deliberative teaching process, both here at the university, and through outreach to the public at large. His knowledge of, and passion for Arctic Foxes was greater than any cliché could encompass.

It's not for his achievements as a scientist I will remember Erich, but as a fundamentally decent human being. I wish I could remember the first time I met Erich with any clarity, but from the beginning, I know I couldn't help but admire and respect the man. He had a warm personality, and was patient enough to always make time for people. More than once, Erich gave me invaluable advice that not only made me a better scientist, but I feel helped me realize what I need to do to become a better human. If I just knocked on his door (the one with the 'immunize your coyote' sticker on it, and the poster from his long time in Barrow), I knew that  he would make time for me. It's this I will maybe miss the most.

Erich, you were a great mentor and colleague. You are desperately missed.

Aaaand, we're back!

I got a new power-supply for my decrepit laptop just in time for my blogaversary! In 2007 I decided to try blogging about something other than me (since I'm very boring), and opened this one up to ramble about Alaska, Science, and things that hit my fancy. 3 years is nothing in person time, but in blog-time it's forever. Alas, I haven't hit the big-time yet - I've the same 30ish readers from a years ago, though I get a lot more hits from India these days. Hi India! But despite this, my total traffic has gone up a bit, thanks to Research Blogging.org. I get a nice little spike in traffic whenever I do a story as part of that collective, and sometimes people give me later link-backs.

I haven't tapped a co-blogger, though I keep meaning to. I'm thinking of looking for someone who does a branch of Science I don't know much about (though, maybe I'd have to change the name). But that's harder than finding a roommate! What if they leave the milk out, and forget to close their HTML tags? Anyhow, I've gone and freshened up my blog a bit in terms of layout and so forth. The most noticeable change is my icon - I've finally ditched the old one I didn't take for one of UAF's handsome reindeer!

Will I still blog a year from now? Aipaagni! Maybe I will, maybe I won't. I don't know the future. But I do know I'm going to have another beer tonight.

Happy Birthday, Blog!

Wow, this takes me back: A mac SE online simulator! I actually started using computers at a very young age, thanks to my father (who is a giant "nerd", and I have inherited all his nerdness ;) ). But it seemed like we only had old computers, so I started with very outdated machines that we'd all play with (and fight over who got to use the computer!) and gradually we moved forward through time until I moved from home and finally got the money to buy a new and shiney computer of my own.

Is it strange to be nostalgic for an old computer? Is it strange to think of old computers as "Old?"

Better still, the computer simulator has tetris on it! Woo hoo!

Filler post

I'm feeling very sick, so I'm going to spend the most of my day laying down and trying to get over this whatever-I-Have.

Two things that made my day less awful were dogs.
1) This dog that fetched some state troopers. (You must watch the video that goes with that.)
2) Loki, who knows to hang up his laundry before barking.

The way some people get about babies? I get that way about dogs. I love dogs.

Oranges

I'm taking a quick break from reading papers to marvel at the tropics that is my office. The University desperately needs a new building, and the legislature has been dragging its feet for years. Our building isn't equipped to do modern biology, is full of asbestos, and has two exterior walls that literally lack insulation. There are rooms that if you shut the door in the winter, the pipes will freeze. In fact, this building wasn't even finished when it was built. They paid to build half the building, but never found the money to build the other half.


My problem stems from the shoddy construction. See, each block of labs is on its own HVAC system, which cools or warms as needed. This is nominally controlled by a thermostat. The thermostat is in the building plans. The controller is looking for input from a theromstat. But a thermostat was never put in. So right now, my lab and office is heated more or less at random. Sometimes, it's bitterly cold inside here. Other times, like today, it's 30C, which is 87F for the metric impaired. I have a fan on in my office.

It is apparently so hot that I set down an orange on the counter. I inspected this orange this morning. I'm eating healthy these days, see. Fewer doughnuts, less coffee, more balanced lunches. Less salt in general. I read papers, skim over various and sundry things, before I realize 2 hours later that I should eat some atsaq with my kuuvviaq. I reach for my orange. It's rotten. It started rotting in just 2 hours of being in this microchasam of Brazil inside my office.

We really need that new life sciences building.

On a slightly sad note: Don't click on this link if you're sensitive, because it's dead albatross chicks. What did they die of? Islands of trash floating in the ocean, 2000 miles from the nearest continent. As most AKian can tell you, being far from villages or cities doesn't mean there isn't trash out there. And adult Albatros apparently mistake plastic for food, bring it back for the chicks to eat, who then die of starvation or choking.

This is a crime. And we have crime scene photos.

And we're back!

I'm back from things, and phew, let me whine! First, I didn't catch a moose. This is a bigger problem, because I couldn't hunt a Caribou in the winter 40 mile hunt (it was closed), and my efforts at getting a Minto Flats permit were thwarted by a car accident. I'm mentally running through lists of possible sources of fresh meat, and we're a few months out from the next opportunity. I've followed the old wisdom that you should fish your butt off in the summer in case you don't catch anything in the winter, but I'm starting to get very, very tired of salmon.

Other sage advice is to be generous with what you catch. The good person does it because that's the right thing to do. But even the selfish person should, so when they run low on meat, they can go begging to their family and friends. ;)

Part of the problem was how ADF&G divided up the antlerless hunt this year. All the closed zones made it very difficult to get to legal animals, and it forced people to hunt in zones that they knew nothing about. Maybe that wouldn't have been so bad on its own, but ice conditions were horrible. I broke through ice on a small river at one point, and only luck made sure I got the snowmachine out. Other places, the warm weather caused overflow to melt completely through, cutting off access to several trails into the flats. And then there was Salcha.

Salcha has open water everywhere. Ice out there is fragile in places, and has shifted around extensively. It took excess of an hour to find a safe path across the river. Wesst of Salcha I saw my only legal animal, but I couldn't shoot it because I was too busy making sure my snowmachine didn't go into the water to get to my gun before it saw me and went running. Finally, to cap it off, some fragile ice broke behind me (shifted?), and I had to take a very, very long way around back to my truck.

In general, things went wrong. And that's really the last large game in the interior until bears start waking up. There's always the haul road for Caribou, if I can find someone to split gas with, but I'm not sure how that is in March-April. Getting up there is a long process, and an expensive one. Other options include going out birding for ptarmigan. Luckily, I love ptarmigan (both eating them, and I like them alive, too!), so that's an option. It would definitely break up the monotony of salmon-salmon-salmon! Or I could go out for other fish, too. There's some options, but nothing that'll get me red meat.

Well, there is one...
Fred Meyers'.
*shudders* No thanks.

A very good dog

This is M.

Back in November, I was taking care of him while his owner was out of state. I was also running the generators for the owner, but mostly watching after M. He's a useful dog. Something around 11 years old (you can see the grey on his muzzle and belly; look at the sagittal crest on his skull), but still energetic, and incredibly well trained. Not vocal at all. And he didn't get into trouble. But this is not why he is a good, useful dog.

I was sighting in my ruger 10/22, which is a small rifle you use for ptarmigan, and for furbearers (except wolf, which really takes a .223). M was along, and when he saw me get out the rifle, he got very excited. M is trained as a gun dog, and thought I was going to get him birds to carry back.

I started sighting in, and then did some free fire, and while I did, M started to get confused. Where were the birds? You could see the thought process in his canine head. There were no birds, he reasoned, because he hadn't flushed them. M ran out to flush anything he could find. Camprobbers and Chickadees went flapping as he dislodged them all from their perch. I stopped firing, not wanting to hit any.

M took my lack of firing as a sign I hit something. He started searching around under where I was aiming. Gosh, that was where he was shooting, but where's the dead birds? He dug around a bit, looked confused, and then finally found something. He carried it on back to me, and dropped it. The picture above is right after he dropped it. He apparently thought that since I was shooting at a tree (a target hanging from the tree) he should bring back some sticks.

M is a very good, and very useful dog. He's trained to hunt firewood. :}

Phew! And, was Alaska Worth it to the States?

I've finished my week long sprint to the finish line, yesterday, and I was so burnt out I loitered around drinking Moose Drool and doodling while watching TV for the rest of the day. A friend of mine told me I look like hell, which means I probably look positively monstrous to the public at large (since my friend is not exactly the `most polished` of people...). Still, it's done, which means I can go back to normal life for a week, before the holidays strike. :)

Enough about me! Was Alaska worth it? To the states, that is. Arctic Economics makes a great point:

An annual gross state product of over $40 billion is not the appropriate benefit measure.  That's gross, not net.  Moreover, $40 billion - or whatever the right benefit figure is - would have been heavily discounted in 1867.  Still more - Alaska costs a lot to maintain; the $7.2 million was a start; we had to defend it from the Japanese, rebuild it after the 1964 earthquake, and pay the heavy costs of governing in this large, remote, and often hostile environment.

Instead, they argue, you need to look at the differences between the outcomes if the US had bought Alaska (what we have today) and what would happen if it hadn't. It's hard to quantify things such as the benefit of having a military base near the far east (apparently it's at least worth Eielson Airforce Base's operational budget), but Dave Barker at the University of Iowa takes a crack at it.

Of course, the more ego-centric question is "Is Alaska better off having been bought by the US?" That's harder to quantify. If we were to assume Alaska would be bought by England (and ended up part of Canada), politically it would depend on whether Alaska ended up acquiring provincial status. Given the comparably large population of AK, I think it might have (~600k is larger than the population of Newfoundland and Labrador) - it's my gut feeling that Candian Provinces enjoy slightly greater autonomy than American States.  Definitely the Alaska would have better representation - Somewhat better than 3% representation, compared to our <<2% representation currently. While whether Eskimo have done better living under US law than their counterparts living under Canadian law is highly debatable (there's a Ph.D. dissertation for Rural Development somewhere in that topic!), the fact that NWT spun off Nunavut as a separate territory and Quebec is granting areal autonomy to Nunavik definitely speaks somewhat better of modern outcomes.

It would be very interesting to quantify each outcome, but it appears at least politically, Alaska drew the short straw!

I don't have an appropriate picture to go with this post, so here is a random fox:

Check for flying pigs!

This is the corner of my desk. Notice anything? My coffee pot is clean. That's right. Hell froze over, and I finally scrubbed 6(±1?) years of grime off the pot. This photo is to prove to the world (and the relevant family) that I can, in fact, clean the coffee pot.

I just choose not to. Now the coffee tastes weird! :p

How the post office stole Christmass

This is just wrong:

FAIRBANKS — The U.S. Postal Service will no longer forward “Dear Santa” letters to Kris Kringle’s elves in North Pole, citing security concerns and putting in doubt the future of a volunteer letter-answering effort that dates back 55 years.

North Pole Mayor Doug Isaacson has called on Alaska’s congressional delegation to intervene, saying the Postal Service is “running roughshod” over the city of North Pole, whose very identity is tied to Christmas.

In other news, this is ~M. He's living with me for a bit, while his owners are off in some flat square state in the lower 48.

Don't poke an angry bear.

Believe it or not, I wasn't born espousing my point of view. It took me a while to become an annoying, opinionated jerk. And despite what my aana thinks (love you!), I don't always share it. ;)

This morning, I read a bit of one-sided, mean-spirited reporting from what I normally consider a reputable news source. I'll keep the subject matter vague, for reasons that I'll quickly make clear. But suffice to say it's something I care about.

Normally, I'd write a letter to the editor expressing my vague consternation, and if I was really upset, I'd place a call as well. But in this case, the story is about something I've always felt unsafe opining on. People who take the same stance as me, in my position, have a history of facing retaliation. Or worse. It's not the vague sort of threat you get from being, say, a staunch Libertarian in a Green Party neighbourhood (or anything like that).

It's easy enough to write an anonymous letter to the editor. However, those are frequently ignored. If not outright trashed. And I do have a name that I do occasionally use for signing up for things, so if get letters intended for my faux-ego, they get tossed before I even go inside my home.

But what responsibility do I have to stand up for my convictions? Surely using a pen name is somewhat disingenuous. Surely I should stand up for what I earnestly believe to be the truth. I've no problem facing down animal rights nutters and terrorists when it comes to standing up for my field, etc. Why not here?

Sadly, I think I'll sign with a pen-name. It's the cowardly way out, but I suppose that's how I'm feeling this morning.

Qayaqa kit'enrituq!

Wow, I pop on off for a few days, and I have no shortage of things to post about! I think I'll start with what I'm most proud of, my finishing my boat.

That's right, I finished sealing it (I needed a sunny day that I wasn't busy on) with Urathane, after getting quite a bit on my hands! And then I let it sit over night. Let me tell you, I couldn't wait for the stuff to cure! I was up first thing in the morning, because it was time to dig out the PFD and test the boat!

I took it to a small lake in my back yard, after the duck hunters were done filling the air with shot, and checked the water temperature. Qerrupaa! Okay, so I don't want to stick around in the water, that's for sure! I got it deep in enough at the marshes that I could launch it.

It floated! Any leaks I don't yet see are a slow leak that I can patch easily. Given the whole project was just made up as I went along, I was amazed. It seemed to roll a bit under me, which surprised me given how low it's centre of gravity was. I think I neglected to anticipate how top heavy adding me would make it. I'll have go deliberately roll qayaqa, to find out where the tipping point is.

All the technical stuff aside... it floats! It didn't sink! I'm so happy! I can't wait to put it on the river!

More kitchen shrapnel.

A while ago, I posted a short little ditty on how pyrex can rapidly fail when it's placed into a state of thermal shock. I'd mentioned that it'd happened to me before. Well, I try to keep this blog about things unrelated to me, but I thought it'd be a nice follow up to that story to mention that I had a pyrex dish explode on me. That's no big deal, I cleaned up the resultant mess, and was back about doing my kitchen chores. And then I took a step where I shouldn't have, driving a 3cm shard of pyrex into my foot. Ooooow. Guess I missed some shrapnel! Now I'm hobbling around like I've been shot.

I had moose stroganoff instead. Here's how to make it:

2 cans (min) Cream of Mushroom soup
1 cp of mushrooms (if you can get mushrooms that aren't awful - which means most of AK is out of luck)
1 cp onion (flakes work).
1 squirt ketchup.
Worcestershire sauce to taste.
2-3 lbs of moose stew meat or beef steak cubes.
1.5 cups (min!) of Sour Cream.

Add everything but the sour cream in the morning, put crockpot on low. Stir once before leaving it alone.
Wait 6-8 hours. At the end, add the sourcream and put the crockpot on warm. Serve over rice/bowtie noodles.

You can skip the sour cream if you want to keep a slim figure. Me? I need the fat. :)

Back again

From the perspective of avoiding smoke for 5 days, my trip south to hang around at a fish camp was a glowing success. From what I can figure out from talking to people, the weather up here only got worse until the cool air moved in. I usually don't "take sides," since fire makes good moose habitat, but I want to see a fleet of flying tankers douse the fires at this point...

From the perspective of trying to fish, the trip was much more mixed. The Copper river was very high, and the fish weren't going anywhere. Things were so rough that some metal equipment got bent by the currents. Oops! I saw a lot of guys motoring around on their 16 foot alumiwelds, and they seemed to have no problem going down stream. When they tried to go upstream, they'd barely be moving, despite their engines roaring. We eventually made up the trip in fish, and after giving a good chunk of it to a couple I was with (they need the fish for feeding their family at their upcoming wedding), I still have a respectable amount.

Now if only I didn't have to eat it in the middle of now three wildfires...
I miss the winter.

AWOL

I'm fleeing the fires (from fairbanks) for my health, so no post tomorrow. Sorry, folks. Hopefully the smoke will let up by the time I get back.

It's your birthday!

XKCD has an incredibly timely and cute comic about woodpeckers and birthdays.
Today is my Blog's Birthday. It was an experiment in whether I could keep a blog focused on things other than what I was doing that day. It was also an experiment in whether I could write about science for the public. My blog peaked at about 100 unique readers, and is now somewhere around 30-40, depending on whether some IP addresses are different people. Not a lot of you post comments! That's sad. ; )

A lot of the things I meant to use this blog for, I haven't. I was going to practise Yugcetun writing in here more, but I've slowly figured it out, mostly, and I get plenty of practise in other ways. I meant to rope in a co-blogger, to pick up some of the slack, but I haven't found another person at the University who I could ask. I meant to write more about politics, but Troopergate and Palin's VP run removed any urge to talk about these things, since we're bombarded with it daily now.

Will I still blog a year from now? Aipaagni! Maybe I will, maybe I won't. I don't know the future. But I do know I'm going to have another beer tonight.

Happy birthday, Blog!

Neat Noodle trick.

I found myself in a situation where I didn't have anything to boil noodles in. I could go get lake water and boil it, but this time of year that's a dicy proposition, as the water smells rather fetid - you can make it sterile, but it's going to taste awful. Digging around, I noticed I had some various fluids, things that could be made into fluids, and I decided to give it a go with beer instead of water.

I took butter, melted it in a pan, and threw in some garlic just long enough to enfuse some flavour in the butter. Toss the garlic before it gets bitter! I took my spaghetti and rolled them around in the melted butter until they soaked most of it up. I then took a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon (a beer I usually don't have on hand, trust me) and poured it into the pan. Covering it, I quickly brought it to a boil.

Wow. I mean wow. PBR is awful for drinking, but the spaghetti came out so perfect that I could have just eaten that for dinner. It doesn't hurt that I've just about perfected my slowcooker moose stroganoff recipe, either (which went on top of the noodles). Luckily, I've used up the last of my PBR, but I think other beers will work well (if not better).