In the annals of Dim Things To Do.

I've said it before. Heck, I've said it here. Do not pet the moose. You do not share a deep spiritual connection with them. They won't recognize you as a kindred spirit.  They aren't your bestest friend in the world. Some of them may be quite cute, but forget about taking them home with you. It isn't going to end well for either of you.

Even not counting car collisions, a moose is more likely to injure you than a bear or a wolf. People fail to appreciate that even a small moose can weigh 800 pounds, and can kick hard enough to break bones. It's not uncommon for wolf biologists to find that wolves in our area have had their skull fractured seriously at some point because a moose kicked them in the head. And a wolf skull is a lot more robust than a human's skull.

And besides, you probably wouldn't like it if a total stranger (and a different species to boot) came up and started petting you, either. Even moose like their personal space.

Petting a moose is about as dumb as it gets.

Moose-petters: 

New Freds West

I swung by Fred's West this morning to grab some gas and odds and ends I needed, and finally saw what all the construction was about - two massive foyers on the north and east side, for containing shopping carts. I'm not sure what the heck they're supposed to accomplish, aside from looking very impressive.

And then it occured to me... Freds is now heating a massive, two story, glass lined foyer that's constantly opening and closing as people enter and leave the store. Is it just me, or is this a massively bad idea? The energy required to keep that volume of air toasty warm must be staggering. The surface area to volume ratio has got to be massive, especially with their tall, pointy roof. It's a grotesque waste of heating and perhaps the single worst design you could have for anywhere in Alaska, never mind Interior Alaska.

Fred's:

From the "You can't make this up" Files

I recognize that keeping good public relations and education is important for carnivore conservation. After all, ranchers don't like their cattle being eaten, joggers don't like being mauled by bears, and that lady who was mobbed by eagles was kinda unhappy at the time.

But honestly, can we admit that sometimes, the public is kind of stupid? This woman is suing the province of Alberta:

A woman just west of Grande Prairie, Alta., says the province's wildlife officers could have prevented her two miniature donkeys from being killed by a grizzly bear in May.
Christie Olesen discovered the bodies of donkeys Tabasco and Jewel on her property on May 13.
[...]

"[The bear] basically ripped them open, ate their organs out and just left their bodies there," Olesen said Tuesday.
Olesen said officers from Alberta Fish and Wildlife knew the bear was in the area and should have warned her.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2010/06/16/edmonton-grizzly-donkey-attack.html#ixzz0rszCpggC

Her argument - that the Province should have let her know that there was a collared bear in the area - makes sense right up until you put some thought to it. 

First you're left with the problem that no one is monitoring collar data 24x7 if it's a GPS collar, and if it's a radio collar? Well, you know where the bear is even less often. 

And it'd be difficult to warn everyone about all the collared bears, everywhere.

And there's the fact that this woman wasn't even taking common sense precautions to protect her valuable livestock, despite the fact that she lives in BEAR HABITAT. You know, like putting the valuable animals in the barn for the night as a matter of course. So they don't get eaten by any of the uncollared bears. Or wolves. Or coyotes. Or, depending on their size, the aforementioned eagles. Or wolverines. Or feral dogs. Or cougars. Or... well, you get the picture.

Aside from that, her argument is great. 

Donkey Lady:

Hat tip to http://overlawyered.com/

A very dangerous precedent

Usually, any argument in academia is limited to just a few letters back and forth, buried away in some journal. Sometimes, it's elevated to the level of "Cold Stares," and then in a few rare cases, a shouting match outside a Hotel at a conference after too many drinks. They can get quite personal; I once heard a respected emeritus tell a scientist that he shouldn't be allowed near students, he was so wrong. But so far, the US's habit of suing over everything remained out of science.

Until now.

According to the New York Times, A paper published this week in the American Psychological Association's journal titled "Is Criminal behavior a central component of psychopathy?", and it is a scathing review of the standard system which individuals use to evaluate whether individuals are psychopaths, and likely to commit crimes again. The authors, Skeem and Cooke, argue that the evidence suggests that psycopathy and criminal behaviour are simply correlated, and there isn't a causal relationship between them. This is the very essence of a scientific argument, where one side attacks the other over construct validity (that is whether their scientific concept is valid), they make predictions, all in a dry and technical format. The paper was prepared for publication in 2007, and accepted. But then the person they were criticizing caught wind of a draft.

"The main issue here is that these authors misrepresented my views by distorting things I said," he said in a telephone interview. "I have been doing this work for 40 years and never seen anything like it."

Dr. Hare immediately threatened Skeem and Cooke with a lawsuit if they went forward with publication, effectively throwing the breaks on the whole thing. The APA didn't publish until 2010, claiming that it had to "All legal claims." There were three years of reviews, legal correspondences, and revisions while the damn thing dragged on.

To me, this is positively outrageous. The idea that science should be decided through legal means is somewhere between absurd and incredibly absurd. You can't litigate reality. Either a set of authors are correct in their criticisms, or they're incorrect. I can't even think of a situation where a scientist could be criminal, merely putting forward an idea. They can be disastrously wrong, but if this is the case, the peer review process, where other scientists critique work before it is accepted for publication, will sort those papers out. If you feel someone misrepresents your work, write a paper criticizing their construct of your work. And, here's a crazy idea, show experimentally why your construct is correct, and why theirs is crap.

That said, while I'm shocked by this legal battle which delayed publication for years, I half expected to see its ilk. I didn't think I would hear about it in Psychological research, but in environmental science, where some company sues some author over research which curtails oil and gas development, or something of that nature. Conservation science has become a battleground over which any random person will have an opinion, and I half expect this race to the bottom to result in lawsuits towards scientists at some point. It's for that reason I'm disgusted by the precedent this whole mess has set. Dr. Hare has done us all one massive disservice.

Dr. Hare:

From the Wasted Money department

Austria has the same problems that every other country has - some roads are dangerous, and there are too many motor accidents on them. Most of the time, people send in civil engineers to think how they can rout traffic to minimize accidents, or change the roads to make accidents less likely (or more survivable). When I first moved into Fairbanks, I moved to the corner of Geist and University, one of the most accident prone intersections in the state, so I'm well familiar with the concept.

Well Austria isn't bound by such conventional thinking. Why send in civil engineers, they thought, when they could send in a team of crack druids to fix the problem. (Yes, Druids).

The team - which has secretly been working for Austrian authorities for two years - is said to have reduced fatal accidents at one notorious crash site to zero after restoring its "terrestrial radiation."

Chief engineer Harald Dirnbacher from Austria's motorway authority ASFINAG explained: ""We were really sceptical at first and certainly didn't want people to know what we were doing, so we kept it secret."

Good call on that. You wouldn't want anyone making fun of you for sending in Druids to move energy about, instead of taking a more practical approach. That would just be intolerable.

I especially love this bit:

But the druids warn that they could be fighting a losing battle as the biggest cause of radiation disruption is mobile phone masts.

I wonder if they ever met this guy.

Austria:

Rush Limbaugh and the Volcano

I don't know why people send me these links. Maybe I have too-low faith in humanity already.

"You know, a couple of days after the health care bill had been signed into law, Obama ran around all over the country saying, "Hey, you know, I'm looking around. The earth hadn't opened up. No Armageddon out there. The birds are still chirping." I think the earth has opened up. God may have replied. This volcano in Iceland has grounded more airplanes -- airspace has been more affected than even after 9/11 because of this plume, because of this ash cloud over Northern and Western Europe. ... It's got everybody just in a shutdown. Earth has opened up. I don't know whether it's a rebirth or armageddon. Hopefully it's a rebirth, God speaking."

Rush Limbaugh on the European volcano problems.
So, by that logic, God really hates Alaska, given all the volcanoes he puts here.

Rush:

Just an down-home woman.

Someone unearthed a copy of the contract Sarah Palin makes people sign to book her for a speaking engagement. Among the requirements are

[...] one of the many requirements that must be met for the former vice presidential hopeful: two unopened bottles of still water and "bendable straws" must be waiting on a wooden lectern.

Bendy straws. Because she's a woman of the people. And then there's her airplane and hotel requirements... Read the whole thing here. She's definitely gone Hollywood. If she's just your average hockey Mom, I'm the king of Spain.

Bear Rancher update

Remember Charlie the Bear Rancher? He's the guy who decided that he was going to feed a whole mess of bears dogfood for years. He was training them to... who knows. Musically fart Easter hymns, for all I know or care. The man is clearly not engaging his brain, if he thinks romping around with bears is a fantastic idea.

Well, the Bear Rancher has plead guilty to feeding wildlife, and is going to get slapped with some fine and probation. I don't see this stopping the next brilliant person who wants to do this, because the state let it go on for 20 years before acting. Treadwell was a good demonstration that Bears are not Pets.

The commentators in ADN, as usual, prove we have the brightest and best here. Some people asked why they're going after a guy who feeds bears when they only tried and punished people engaged in the wanton waste incident in the North-West. Like this fine person:

This man taught us a lesson that hopefully the youth of today will remember, that harmony is possible under the proper conditions. As usual, the authorities must impose their will upon those who don't conform. I can only imagine the price of his fine might equal the value of his property. This is just plain wrong, we have a person who feeds bears in a remote location and is looking at a minimum fine of 20K. And meanwhile back on the tundra we have a caribou slaughter that results in a comparative wrist slap.
I think the blindfolded broad with the scales has lost her freaking mind.

Ah, yes. Because, you know a guy who can afford to ship 10,000 lbs of dog food to feed bears each year just can't take a fine. Where is he going to find money to feed the 2011 bears, I ask you? Why, with such a large fine, he won't be able to feed bears for at least five years! Big brother is out to get us!!!!one

pkidwell  wrote on 04/07/2010 06:41:11 AM:
I long for the days when the government will get out of our lives and allow us to live as we had before the kooks took over.

Don't you love how this person just claimed Charlie the Bear Rancher is one of the sane, normal people needing protected from the "Kooks?" Nothing says "Normal Behaviour" feeding bears for 20 years to train them to do stuff. Why, that's our god given right to do that!

Anton_Chigurh  wrote on 04/07/2010 07:52:22 AM:

A 100 years ago no one would have given a care in the world as long as he was not hurting himself or others. Complete government take over of almost every aspect of our lives is on the horizon. You'll see

Top on the Obama commo-fascist take over's agenda is to take your god given, constitutional right to feed random bears and strip them like ladies at a Republican fundraiser in Vegas. Yes, it turns out the New-World-Order is mostly concerned with getting states to enforce laws they had before the New-World-Order. How insidious.

Alaska. Seriously:

Top Photo by Alaska Department of Fish and Game / The Associated Press

WTF, Austrailian reserachers! WTF!

I subscribe to Barking Up the Wrong Tree, which is a blog of random psych abstracts of varying interest. The blogger is big into behavioural economics, which I like. I like science in general. A lot. :)

Anyhow, I wasn't going to blog anything today - I'm on vacation, and I'm trying to find a cheaper fix for my ex-truck (maybe I should ride my snowmachine into work?). But I glanced at this abstract, and went !!! Read the first bit of the methods:

Tourists at the Koorana Saltwater Crocodile Farm in Coowonga, Queensland, Australia, including 62 males and 41 females, aged 18–66 (M = 34.2, SD = 13.3), were randomly assigned to play a laptop-simulated Electronic Gaming Machine (EGM) either: (1) prior to entry, or (2) after having held a 1-m saltwater-crocodile.

So, either you play slots, or they HAND YOU A CROCODILE, and then you play slots.

Remind me not to gamble in Austrailia! O.O!!

Australia:

Everything I hate about science reporting...

The BBC has managed to hit just about everything I hate in science reporting in one story. It's about how DNA analysis could predict most effective diet. So, I click on it to read.

A simple DNA test may predict whether someone is more likely to lose weight on a low fat or a low carbohydrate diet, say US researchers.

The results from the small preliminary study of 101 women showed those on the best diet for their genes lost two to three times more weight than the rest.
The results are being presented at an American Heart Association conference.
Experts said the findings tied in with previous studies, but further work should be carried out. 

Who are these researchers? What conference? When? What was the nature of their study? I'm not looking for crazy details, like the metabolic pathways involved... hell, even some credit to the team(?) of people who did it would be great. Some names, for crying out loud.  Who are "researchers?" Stanford is a big university. Saying "Researchers at Stanford" is like saying "Some people in California." It doesn't let me know who the heck we're talking about.

Thank goodness they didn't bring on some quack for false balance...

Lawyers for Lamprey?

Switzerland as a country has officially jumped the shark. Well, they would have, if they hadn't have decided that Sharks deserve better. On March 7th, they're going to vote on whether animals deserve lawyers.

They're going to vote on whether animals deserve lawyers.

The debate took on a new dimension two weeks ago when prosecutors in the canton of Zurich accused an angler of having tortured a large pike, because the battle between man and beast took about 10 minutes.
Goetschel, in his capacity as the canton's animal lawyer, was in court to represent the dead fish. He regrets that the case, which isn't typical of his work, received so much attention.

Wh... what? Huh? Who? Seriously? Seriously?
I need a lawyer to represent me for all the pain and mental anguish this story has caused me trying to wrap my head around it.
On the other hand, dead fish have feelings too, I guess.

Switzerland:

Corn Syrup ads?

Apparently, there's a series of ads out there by the Corn Syrup lobby, telling us all that there's absolutely nothing wrong with their product, no sir. Here's one of them.




Well, let me fill in what the other lady couldn't. I'm not an expert, but I worked with an expert who was conducting a study when I was back in Utah. I did a lot of lurn'n. To begin with, I was sceptical - I'm just a sceptical guy, in general. But gradually, the guy doing the study won me over with evidence.
So, here we go: What's wrong with HFCS? High Fructose Corn Syrup engages different metabolic pathways than other, more complex carbohydrates. It's metabolized differently, and has been linked to lower general health in mouse experiments. In human studies, there is evidence suggesting that linking comparable amounts of HFCS and other carbohydrates, people are more prone to obesity on the HFCS diets. Is HFCS the sole source of the obesity epidemic? No one claims that. However, it may be a large contributing factor. Complex carbohydrates are better for you.

And the idea that HFCS is 100% natural is absurd. It's refined. And even if it wasn't refined, being natural is no great boon. Ebola virus is natural, but you don't see people advocating contracting it.

About this ad campaign, I say this:

You can't make this up

Toronto tasered a deer.

Seriously.

Tanana Valley Meats

Something is rotten in Tanana Valley Meats:

FAIRBANKS — After Travis Marsh shot his first moose back in September, a nice 52-inch bull near Delta Junction, he couldn’t have been happier. The thought of having a full freezer of tasty, high-protein meat made his mouth water.
[...]
But Marsh and Morgan were left with a bad taste in their mouths after waiting almost two months to get their meat back, and they say it was rancid. Not to mention the fact that Marsh dropped off 421 pounds of meat to be processed and got back less than 200 pounds.

I processes my own game (the way god intended), but I've heard good things about Interior Alaskan Fish Processors (Aka Santa's Smokehouse). Their rates are reasonable, and I've eaten their breakfast sausage, and it isn't half bad! Not as good as our own, of course! ;)

Nothing pisses off someone more than working hard to catch an animal, only to have it go bad on them for things outside their control. All the effort, and this place just ruins it all. And then there's this gem:

Miller said he has a list of about a half-dozen customers who have called to complain about how long it took to process their meat or the bad-tasting meat. One of the complainants is threatening a civil suit against the Tanana Valley Meats because he and his hunting partners took in 315 pounds of moose meat to get ground up and it all came back bad.

In that case, Miller said he offered to replace the hunter’s 315 pounds of moose with beef, a trade the hunter seemed receptive to but had not agreed to as of Friday. In other cases, the plant has reduced processing fees or offered full refunds, he said.

 My head would explode, if it were me in that situation. Replace with beef? Are you nuts? I don't want to eat beef, I want to eat moose! It'd be like replacing bars of gold with a bag of rocks. I'm getting angry just thinking about it, and I didn't even have my meat ruined! And then the owner goes on to blame the hunters. If it were just a few, that might be believable, but this large number? Blah.

It sounds like there's a resounding `Don't use Tanana Valley Meats`

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.

Avatar Revisited.

I just saw the trailer for Avatar while watching House, and I have to say, it's even worse than I thought. They managed to show that they totally missed what made Dances with Wolves not suck in about 4 minutes in an very succinct way.

Blah.

On the other hand, House is funny.

PLBs in the DNM. RLY.

Sad but true:

If they had not been toting the device that works like Onstar for hikers, “we would have never attempted this hike,” one of them said after the third rescue crew forced them to board their chopper. It’s a growing problem facing the men and women who risk their lives when they believe others are in danger of losing theirs.

Technology has made calling for help instantaneous even in the most remote places. Because would-be adventurers can send GPS coordinates to rescuers with the touch of a button, some are exploring terrain they do not have the experience, knowledge or endurance to tackle.

This story makes me mildly angry, because we rely on this stuff to get us out of really dangerous messes. The one day I have to actually activate a PLB, I don't want the guys on the end wondering if I'm just some jerk from the states who forgot to bring his toothbrush. I wish there was a way to punish people for non-emergencies...

Racism, obviously, is dead.

NEW ORLEANS – A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.
"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

In my experience, the words "I'm not a racist" is usually followed buy some incredibly racist comment. The full story is here. Oh, it should go without saying that this is flamingly illegal. It's not even close to being slightly legal. It's not even legal if you squint at it after a few pints, and it's dark, and you have pinkeye, and you left your glasses at the bar.

It's pretty damn illegal.

I know, now that we have a black president, racism is obviously dead.

More on Border Hassles

Perhaps I was a bit hasty in speaking about how easy it would be to smuggle much of the data past border security. Here's why: The DHS retains the right to mirror all your data. To me, this means they aren't just rooting around like an incompetent baggage handler, but instead running programs to search through your data for various patterns. Thus, any solutions dependant on retaining the data in some encrypted format would be poorly advised, because they would encounter this data, and either crack it themselves, or request the key from you. Request the key with a court. That's the kind of request you can't really say no to.

This doesn't prevent people from merely hiding microSD cards - that'd be damn hard to find, since they're smaller than a fingernail. Or just don't physically transport the data at all, and email it to yourself (or a trusted party) encrypted with a one time pad, and waltz across the border without carrying anything illicit. One Time Pads, it should be noted, can provide perfect protection if implemented correctly.

And again, it only effects people physically carrying data into the country. On their persons. Through customs. Anyone involved in data smuggling would know how to easily evade it, unless they've completely failed to do their homework.

The problem is that data is just too easily transformed, and too easily transmitted electronically. This only accomplishes making the border crossing security experience more elaborate, while returning a minimum of additional security. The most this policy will accomplish is annoying the hell out of legit citizens.

Here's some documents from Customs and Border Protection relevant to the policy:
Here's the press release.
Here's the Factsheet for the policy. (40kb)
Here's the actual policy. (Warning, 6mb)

Here's pretty much all you need to defeat the policy.
So... we're assuming Al Quida doesn't know how to use google for anything other than learning how to dig holes?

Check your files at the border

In case you didn't think border security is silly enough, the DHS is now searching digital media. DHS claims they're keeping out terrorism information, and protecting us from information smugglers. They point to capturing a pedophile as proof positive their system works.

I'm calling moose nuggets on that.

All it's proven is they can catch really, really dumb criminals. Actually, all this could possibly protect us against is really dumb criminals. Anyone who has half a brain, and is trying to smuggle information could do any of the following

1. Put the information on a microSD card and hide it.
2. Embed the information using stenography.
3. Hide the information on a unmounted partition.
4. Email the information encrypted with a one time pad.
5. Deliberately corrupt the files in an easily repairable way.
6. Just make your terrorist information really, really confusing to read.

The list goes on. There's a lot of low hanging fruit out there, and I sincerely doubt that DHS has IT experts positioned along the Mexican border. At best they're just randomly flipping for your data looking for something blatantly egregious. I guess best part of security theatre is that there's always another act...

Another reason to stay in AK!

Edit to add: Someone pointed out to me that this only works one way. They're just preventing you from bringing information into the country, and not out of the country, with the regulations. I.e., this will only prevent people from smugging nuclear secrets into the US, as if there's a lack of bomb making information here on home soil. If you have terrorist information, like blueprints to the White House, and Joe Biden's favourite bathtime songs, you could dance your way over the border and DHS wouldn't screen you. After all, you're leaving, not entering.