Christmas Lights: On a Truck

"Truck With Christmas Lights "

(from Alaska-in-Pictures.com, used w/o permission)

This photo is described thusly:

"Alaska. Seward Highway. A Christmas truck."

I think that says it all.

But I'll ad a bit, anyway.

I like it. That's an imaginative holiday display. And, a good photo. My opinion.

More:

• "- - - Videos of Christmas Lights, Holiday Lights, and Music"

Santa Letters Program Scrapped - Lower 48 Sex Offender SNAFU Blamed

"Grinch! North Pole irked at end to Santa replies"
The Associated Press (November 19, 2009)

"Starry-eyed children writing letters to the jolly man at the North Pole this holiday season likely won't get a response from Santa Claus or his helpers.

"The U.S. Postal Service is dropping a popular national program begun in 1954 in the small Alaska town of North Pole, where volunteers open and respond to thousands of letters addressed to Santa each year. Replies come with North Pole postmarks...."

The Santa letters program is a victim of the 'one bad apple spoils the whole barrel' principle.

"...Last year, a postal worker in Maryland recognized an Operation Santa volunteer there as a registered sex offender. The postal worker interceded before the individual could answer a child's letter, but the Postal Service viewed the episode as a big enough scare to tighten rules in such programs nationwide.

"People in North Pole are incensed by the change, likening the Postal Service to the Grinch trying to steal Christmas.

"People in North Pole are incensed by the change, likening the Postal Service to the Grinch trying to steal Christmas. The letter program is a revered holiday tradition in North Pole...."

"...North Pole Mayor Doug Isaacson agreed caution is necessary to protect children. But he's outraged North Pole's program should be affected by a sex offender's actions on the East Coast — and he thinks it's wrong that locals just learned of the change.

" 'It's Grinchlike that the Postal Service never informed all the little elves before the fact,' he said. 'They've been working on this for how long?'..."

I'm with North Pole's mayor on this. Yes, it's important - necessary - to protect children.

On the other hand, maybe the answer isn't to tell volunteers that they can't send letters "from Santa," because they might be sex offenders.

Excuse Me, The Lemming is Going to Rant

I realize that it may involves scrapping decades of dubious advances, but I think it's time to consider fixing a system that isn't delivering on its promise of a kinder, groovier world.

I'm tired of reading that recurring news item: the one about the repeat offender who decided to stop cooperating with the parole board. The name of the victim(s), the offender, and the location are different each time - but the pattern is all too familiar. It isn't just the judicial system, I think.

Values-free education, and generations of parents who were told - and sometimes believed - that they shouldn't tell their children about what the parents had discovered that worked, and what didn't.

As one dad said, "I did drugs, so I don't think I've got the right to tell my kids not to." That would be like me saying, "I had a serious drinking problem, so I don't think I should tell my kids that alcohol abuse can be a problem." One of the stronger arguments a parent could make, when kids come back with, "how would you know?" - is "I did it, and it wasn't a good idea."

Embarrassing? Yes. It's awkward to admit to something less than 100% perfection. But I haven't seen evidence that parenting is supposed to be easy.

That was close - this post almost went off on a tangent. Getting back on topic:

I'm genuinely sorry that the entire 'Santa letters' program had to be scrapped.

And no, this isn't very "apathetic" of The Lemming - which I've explained before.

Alaska Pizza - That's Not a Typo

"The United States of Pizza: Alaska"
Slice Pizza Blog (August 13, 2009)

"Although I worry that a pizza oven would threaten the structural integrity of an igloo, Spencer Shroyer (editor of the Anchorage Daily News's Play Magazine), my invaluable source of Alaskan pizza intel, showed me that wood-fired ovens do indeed exist in the Land of the Midnight Sun. All Alaska jokes aside, we in the Lower 48 must overcome our Rudolph-ladened imaginings of Meat Lover pies strewn with caribou, moose, and reindeer sausage (a topping option at the Great Alaska Pizza Company) dipped in Eskimo ice cream instead of ranch.

"Due to the difficulty of growing year-round in Alaska (the state does experience a very short but intense growing season that produces world-record-setting crops like a 19-pound carrot and a 106-pound cabbage), there aren't as many specialized regional ingredients aside from fish...."

Turns out that reindeer sausage and moose meat aren't as common in Alaskan pizzas as people in the lower 48 might think. Those who ponder on Alaskan pizza toppings, that is.

This post may not be the last word on Alaskan pizza - I'd be surprised if it was, actually - but if you're in Anchorage or Homer, Alaska, this would be a pretty good place to go to find out about a couple of pizza places.

---

A tip of the hat to williamcooks, on Twitter, for the heads-up on this post.

Photos of a Plasma Research Facility in Alaska - Pretty Cool, Actually

"Gallery: Inside Alaska’s Answer to Area 51"
Wired Danger Room (August 4, 2009)

"200 miles northeast of Anchorage, there’s a massive military facility tucked deep in the black pine. What goes on at the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (Haarp) depends on who you ask. Self-directed 'researchers' like Nick Begich say the collection of transmitters and receivers is conducting secret tests of monstrous weapons for the Defense Department: mind control, weather manipulation, long-distance spying. The military scientists in charge of this military installation insist that Haarp has absolutely no direct military applications whatsoever..."

Okay: This is mostly a collection of photos, illustrating the research facility and project mentioned in my last post.

The 10 photos give a pretty good look at the facility. I don't have quite the same attitude about the military that's expressed in this pair of articles - but the pair of them do a pretty good job of outlining the sort of research that's being done.

More-or-less-related posts:

• "Scientist Forced to Deal With Government! The Horror! The Horror! (and a bit about plasma physics)"
  (August 4, 2009)
• "Doomsday Seed Vault in Svalbard, or Don't Worry: There's Always Something to Worry About"
  (June 5, 2008)

Scientist Forced to Deal With Government! The Horror! The Horror! (and a bit about plasma physics)

"Strange New Air Force Facility Energizes Ionosphere, Fans Conspiracy Flames"
Wired (July 20, 2009)

"Todd Pedersen had to hustle—the sky was scheduled to start glowing soon, and he didn't want to miss it. It was just before sunset, a cold February evening in deep-woods Alaska, and the broad-shouldered US Air Force physicist was scrambling across the snow in his orange down parka and fur-lined bomber hat. Grabbing cables and electronics, he rushed to assemble a jury-rigged telescope atop a crude wooden platform.

"The rig wasn't much, just a pair of high-sensitivity cameras packed into a dorm-room refrigerator and pointed at a curved mirror reflecting a panoramic view of the sky. Pedersen had hoped to monitor the camera feed from a relatively warm bunkhouse nearby. But powdery snow two feet deep made it difficult to string cables back to the building...."

There's a 30-acre antenna array in Alaska, set up to emit 3.6 megawatts into Earth's ionosphere. The article discusses some of the technical details, and the sort of marketing that Todd Pedersen had to do, to get the array funded and set up.

The author writes, "...But the shocking thing about Haarp isn't that it's a boondoggle (it's actually pretty worthwhile) or that it was spawned by a military-industrial-petrochemical-political complex (a hallowed government tradition). It's that, all too often, this is the way big science gets done in the US. Navigating the corridors of money and power is simply what scientists have to do...."

Me? I'm not shocked. But then, I know how Leonardo DaVinci got contracts: and why professors and scientists hire grant writers when they need money for their projects. Somehow, I made it through the sixties without learning to expect people to fork over money just because a project is, like, groovy.

Bottom line: This is an interesting look at one aspect of contemporary plasma physics research, written from a very well-defined point of view.

Vaguely-Related post:

• "Doomsday Seed Vault in Svalbard, or Don't Worry: There's Always Something to Worry About"
  (June 5, 2008)

Chukchi Blob: It's Algae (No Space Aliens, Alas!)

"Black goop afloat off Arctic coast identified as algae"
Alaska Daily News (July 16, 2009)
"ALGAE: Still, experts don't know why there's so much of it.

"A sample of the giant black mystery blob that Wainwright hunters discovered this month floating in the Chukchi Sea has been identified.

"It looks to be a stringy batch of algae. Not bunker oil seeping from an aging, sunken ship. Not a sea monster.

" 'We got the results back from the lab today,' said Ed Meggert of the Department of Environmental Conservation in Fairbanks. 'It was marine algae.'..."

This article in the Anchorage Daily news includes a dialog with the University of Alaska, Fairbanks's Institute of Marine Science's director, Terry Whitledge. He hasn't seen the blob in person, but he's seen photos of it: and concluded that it's stringy algae.

Somewhat more to the point, the Department of Environmental Conservation lab in Anchorage says it's algae, too: and they had a sample of the blob to examine.

Algae? Stringy Algae?! No Mutant Monsters? No Secret Government Labs? No Space Aliens?

The Chukchi Blob had so much promise: a miles-long, hairy thing that was entangling - and possibly eating - jellyfish and birds; biding its time, perhaps, before making a light lunch of Nome and moving on to devastate Anchorage. Maybe it was the first wave of a space-alien invasion. Or a mutant monster that escaped from the secret lab that [name of your favorite conspirator here] has hidden up in the frozen north.

(That's really why 'They' have all that north shore drilling: it's a cover for the [name of your favorite conspirator here] operation.)

And, no: I don't really think so.

The Chukchi Blob is still satisfactorily mysterious, even if it has been identified as the result (probably) of an algae bloom. We don't know where it came from, why it's so big, and why people who live in that part of the world (yes, northern Alaska is inhabited) haven't seen anything like it in recent years.

More-or-less related posts:

• "Invasion of the Giant Jellyfish! No, Really"
  (July 20, 2009)
• "Blob in Chukchi Sea May be Alive, or It Came From Alaska"
  (July 17, 2009)
• "Montauk Monster is Back: Photo Revealed"
  (May 13, 2009)
• "Swine Flu / Influenza A(H1N1) Might, Maybe, be a Lab Mistake"
  (May 13, 2009)
• "Montauk Monster: It's Alive! Three Live Sightings So Far"
  (August 3, 2008)
• "Montauk Monster: Publicity Stunt by Space Aliens, Implicating USDA's Plum Island?"
  (July 30, 2008)

About Eyewitness testimony:

• It's not entirely unreliable
  • "Is Expert Testimony On Eyewitness Reliability Admissible?"
    Forensic-Evidence.com (March 18, 2003)
  • It's not entirely reliable
    "HOW RELIABLE IS EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY?: A Decision By New York State's Highest Court Reveals Unsettling Truths About Juries"
    FindLaw (May 16, 2001)

Blob in Chukchi Sea May be Alive, or It Came From Alaska

"Huge blob of Arctic goo floats past Slope communities"
Anchorage Daily News (July 14, 2009)
"IT'S NOT OIL: No one in the area can recall seeing anything like it before.

"Something big and strange is floating through the Chukchi Sea between Wainwright and Barrow.

"Hunters from Wainwright first started noticing the stuff sometime probably early last week. It's thick and dark and 'gooey' and is drifting for miles in the cold Arctic waters, according to Gordon Brower with the North Slope Borough's Planning and Community Services Department.

"Brower and other borough officials, joined by the U.S. Coast Guard, flew out to Wainwright to investigate. The agencies found 'globs' of the stuff floating miles offshore Friday and collected samples for testing...."

Samples of the blob have been sent to a lab for testing, but it seems clear that it's not oil: and it's not anything that people have seen in the area. At least, not recently.

The North Slope Borough's Planning and Community Services Department's Brower have a pretty good description of it: "...'From the air it looks brownish with some sheen, but when you get close and put it up on the ice and in the bucket, it's kind of blackish stuff ... (and) has hairy strands on it.'..."

If this were a 1950s low-budget science fiction movie, I'd know what it was, and I'm pretty sure that some people today will jump to conclusions. My guess is that it's natural, nothing new, but not all that common.

Far from 'boring,' my expectation is that whatever this blob is might be a new sort of creature - or maybe the world's biggest hairball.

More:

• "Unknown substance in the Chukchi Sea"
  North Slope Borough Planning Department (July 11, 2009) video 1:56

Volcanoes in Hawaii, Alaska: Science and Tourism

"Hawaii Volcano Glows"
LiveScience (June 7, 2009)

"Lava is thought to be close to the surface of the summit of Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, suggesting a modest eruption might occur. But geologists don't really know if it will erupt, or if lava might simply flow from the summit, or neither.

"In past events, the volcano's lava has sometimes travelled 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the crater to the sea. The flows, at 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit, occasionally explode when they contact the cool ocean waters...."

The glow-in-the-dark volcano got a more extensive writeup in The Associated Press:

"Scientists eye glowing volcano crater in Hawaii"
The Associated Press (June 6, 2009)

That photo, from the LiveScience article, shows that there are places that have more trouble with road maintenance than Minnesota.

---

LiveScience also has a somewhat more detailed article about the use of a Lightning Mapping Array at Alaska's Mount Redoubt volcano:

"Dramatic Image Shows Volcano's Lightning"
LiveScience (April 8, 2009)

Mound Redoubt Oil Storage Tanks Drained: Good Idea

"Coast Guard to move oil from near Alaska volcano"
The Associated Press (April 3, 2009)

"ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The U.S. Coast Guard is planning to move some of the millions of gallons of oil stored in two tanks near an Alaska volcano that has had 18 major eruptions in the last two weeks but has been relatively quiet in recent days.

"Mount Redoubt began erupting on March 22. Since then, the volcano 100 miles southwest of Anchorage has produced numerous large explosions that have sent mud and rock cascading down its flanks. Some of that mud and debris has reached the Drift River Terminal, 22 miles away.

"That has led to concerns that the terminal, where more than 6 million gallons of oil is stored in two tanks, could be damaged and cause a catastrophic oil spill that would damage Cook Inlet's valuable fisheries...."

Those 22 miles must have seemed like a great distance, when the Drift River Terminal was built. Of course, Mount Redoubt wasn't erupting then. The fact is, people don't, generally, plan years, decades, or centuries ahead when building things.

Take Tacoma, Washington, for example: It's only about twice as far away from Mount Rainier as the Drift River Terminal is from Mount Redoubt. Mount Rainier hasn't erupted since 1882: and probably won't this year, or the next. On the other hand, an eruption at the wrong time of year could be rather unpleasant. A whole lot of snow can accumulate on the slopes - you get the idea.

Drift River Terminal: DRFA2 and Related Facilities

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Mount Rainier and Tacoma, Washington

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More:

• Alaska Volcano Observatory
  "Live webcam images of various Alaskan volcanoes"
• "Mount Rainier, Washington "
  USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory

Mount Redoubt: It Was Only a Small Explosion

"7th Mount Redoubt explosion is small one"
United Press International (March 25, 2009)

"ANCHORAGE, Alaska, March 25 (UPI) -- A small explosion at Mount Redoubt in Alaska early Wednesday sent up an ash cloud 15,000 feet that dissipated over the volcano, scientists say...."

I can't help remembering a line from some movie, where an accident-prone undergrad said something like "it was only a small fire."

Related posts:

• "Mount Redoubt Webcams: Watching Eruptions on the Web"
  (March 24, 2009)
• "Mount Redoubt: Thar She Blows! (Eruptions Started Last Sunday)"
  (March 24, 2009)
• "Volcanoes, a Governor, Science, and the Next Yellowstone Caldera Blowout"
  (February 25, 2009)
• "Mount Redoubt Steaming, Anchorage Waiting, Webcams Watching"
  (February 1, 2009)

Mount Redoubt Webcams: Watching Eruptions on the Web

This is an excerpt from an earlier post.

Mount Redoubt, in Alaska, began erupting last Sunday (March 22, 2009). People in Anchorage, Alaska, about a hundred miles away, are uncomfortably up close and personal with the eruptions.

The rest of us can watch, through several webcams:

"Live webcam images of various Alaskan volcanoes"
Alaska Volcano Observatory
Including two for Mount Redoubt:

• Hut
  "This camera provides a view of the north flank of Redoubt."
• CI
  "The camera is located on Unocal Platform Anna, approximately 38 miles SE of Mt. Spurr, it was originally pointed at Mt. Spurr."

The Alaska Volcano Observatory looks like a pretty good resource for information about Alaska's volcanoes.

And, on Mount Redoubt: "Redoubt Activity"

Mount Redoubt is roughly a hundred miles away from Anchorage, near the east edge of the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, west of that long island across Cook Inlet from Clam Gultch.


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Mount Redoubt: Thar She Blows! (Eruptions Started Last Sunday)

Mount Redoubt, in Alaska, erupted yesterday.

It's about a hundred miles from Anchorage, so you'd think there wouldn't be much of a problem. With this volcano, a hundred miles is really close.

• "ALASKA VOLCANO PICTURES: Redoubt Erupts"
  National Geographic (March 23, 2009)
• "Alaska volcano erupts 15km into sky"
  RTÉ News (March 23, 2009)
• "Volcanic ash snarls air traffic in Alaska"
  Los Angeles Times (March 23, 2009)
• "Alaskans don masks as once-sleepy volcano spews ash"
  CNN (March 23, 2009)

Related posts:

• "Volcanoes, a Governor, Science, and the Next Yellowstone Caldera Blowout"
  (February 25, 2009)
  • Most of the post is about volcanoes in North America. Including the whopper under Yellowstone: "Mt. St. Helens and Pompeii: It Could Have Been a Lot Worse "
• "Mount Redoubt Steaming, Anchorage Waiting, Webcams Watching"
  (February 1, 2009)

Mount Redoubt Steaming, Anchorage Waiting, Webcams Watching

Places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Mount Redoubt don't get in the news much, unless there's something like a volcanic eruption. Which may happen any time, now:

• "Scientist see holes in glacier at Alaska volcano"
  The Associated Press (February 1, 2009)
  • "ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Geologists monitoring Mount Redoubt for signs of a possible eruption noticed that a hole in the glacier clinging to the north side of the volcano had doubled in size overnight — and now spans the length of two football fields.
  • "Scientists with the Alaska Volcano Observatory on Friday flew close to Drift Glacier and spotted...."
• "Alaska volcano 'more energetic,' scientists say"
  CNN (January 30, 2009)
  • "(CNN) -- Mount Redoubt, the Alaskan volcano expected to erupt at any time, is getting a bit more edgy...."
• "Inside Alaska's Explosive Redoubt Volcano"
  LiveScience (January 30, 2009)
  • "Mount Redoubt volcano in Alaska could erupt within days to weeks, say scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, amazing the rest of us with their certainty...."

One of my favorite headlines is:

• "Travelers volcano eruption survival guide"
  Alaska Transportation Examiner (January 30, 2009)
  • "In case you had not heard, Mt. Redoubt is set to do another big blow. The last time was about twenty years ago and the spewing of ash disrupted air travel for weeks.""
    (January 30, 2009)

The article's tone is light:"...The problem is that as you can imagine, volcanic ash and jet turbines do not mix very well...." You'll get a pretty good background on why it isn't a good idea to fly through a volcanic ash cloud. And, more to the point, a sensible-sounding list of ways to prepare, if you're traveling past an active volcano.

The University of Alaska has a couple of webcams pointed at Mount Redoubt. One of them was watching another volcano, but they turned it for this occasion. At this moment (about a quarter after 10 in the morning, here in central Minnesota), there's not much to see. Anchorage is west and north of us - so it's still night there.

"Live webcam images of various Alaskan volcanoes"
Alaska Volcano Observatory
Including two for Mount Redoubt:

• Hut
  "This camera provides a view of the north flank of Redoubt."
• CI
  "The camera is located on Unocal Platform Anna, approximately 38 miles SE of Mt. Spurr, it was originally pointed at Mt. Spurr."

The Alaska Volcano Observatory looks like a pretty good resource for information about Alaska's volcanoes.

And, on Mount Redoubt: "Redoubt Activity"

Mount Redoubt is roughly a hundred miles away from Anchorage, near the east edge of the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, west of that long island across Cook Inlet from Clam Gultch.


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