Rod

Lucy & I were charged by an angry moose today. We’d just come down the hill and over the bridge on the far side of the lake when I heard this distressed wheezing and grunting sound. I looked up the hill and among the birch trees saw a young moose coming fast in our direction. No big deal seeing a moose, we see them all the time in Kincaid Park, but this one appeared frightened like something was chasing it. Except I didn’t see anything behind it, and its hackles were up and its head lowered, a posture consistent with an angry moose. It was charging. Us! I thought Holy Crap, and started into a run down the trail along the lake. I shouted to Lucy to do the same. I slowed down just enough to turn and look, and sure enough the moose was still coming. We picked up the pace. I stopped again in another fifty feet or so and turned again. I didn’t see it moving but then I spotted it in the trees. When it saw me it started running in our direction again! We ran the rest of the way to the parking lot and stopped again, but this time no sign of the moose behind us.

I’d seen this sign a thousand times at the trail head but never paid it any attention:

BIGGER.

Years ago before Happy Wife and I were together, she was running on a popular Anchorage trail with her dog when a bull moose charged them. She ran for cover behind a tree and the moose pinned her down there. Every time she tried to escape the moose moved to stop her. Eventually, someone at a nearby house saw she was trapped and called the police. The police came and distracted the moose long enough for Happy Wife to escape, and then they shot and killed the moose. The story made the local newspaper and Happy Wife was pilloried in the comment section with claims she behaved irresponsibly around “our urban moose”, and now she has the blood of a dead moose on her hands. One outraged person even called her home phone to chew her out! Sheesh.

Lately, I hear lamentations emanate from the country’s mid section: It’s so cold!

And I am supposed to moved by this?

Where was the reciprocal concern for We Alaskans last December when for weeks — weeks! –a drop of snot would freeze before leaving the nostril. In Fairbanks (aka “SquareBanks”) it was so cold — “How cold was it?!” — diesel fuel gelled. That’s how cold. Yet instead of sympathy from our fellow countrymen to the south, instead of answering the president’s inaugural beseechment to show concern for others over ourselves, we heard instead, that’s right: Silence.

Proving my long-held contention that few in America care much about what goes on in Alaska. So long as the oil keeps flowing and the wild salmon appear on dinner plates, whatever.

So; so sad to hear it’s cold America. Point your ear northwest and listen carefully, you may hear the sound of my tiny violin play.

And now Lucy and I are going out for our morning walk. 34° with a freezing rain advisory. Don’t you wish!

We were at the beach house Friday & Saturday night. On Saturday we witnessed certain people, 150 of them, leap into 36° saltwater to raise money for cancer research. Surely there’s a better way. Frogmen in dry suits were standing treading nearby to save anyone who might have gone into shock or needed help getting out of the water. None did during our watch. Banana man doing a flip was a nice theatrical twist. (Turn the video quality to at least 480p).

Later, Happy Wife discovers a starfish in a pool at low tide.

BIGGER.

The tide was low enough to expose the isthmus leading to a small monadnock offshore.

 

BIGGER.

All in all two great nights except Lucy was restless all of Saturday night, freakin’ out every time a slab of snow slid down the metal roof. Bless her, Happy Wife spent the entire night on the floor with Lucy to try to keep her settled.

Proposed title of a forthcoming book from Armstrong: “It’s Not About My Red Blood Cell Count (Either).”

Then what the hell was it about?

Nevermind. No one will believe you anyway.

…

I have a been a bicycle enthusiast from the time the training wheels came off my Schwinn Stingray. It was on 84th street, I was a young boy. I briefly turned to see my father far down the sidewalk, no longer running behind me holding the sissy bar to keep me balanced. I was riding, on two wheels, all by myself! Never again has a single experience reified the concept of freedom for me like that day on my bike.

It sickens me in a way to see this house of lies come crashing down on Armstrong, someone who had almost single handedly resurrected interest in cycling in America in the early part of this century. And now this betrayal. Pathetic.

A little contrition might have been nice, not that I expected it.

 

I’ve been having a conversation with myself over the national debt, knowing full well that, like bad summer weather, shaking my fist at it won’t make it go away. Surely we can all agree this debt is a bad thing, created by decades of profligate overspending in Washington, largely on things the government should not have been spending money on in the first place.

The dumbed down appeal from the president is that we as a nation can’t default on our obligations, the money was authorized to be spent by congress, we spent it, and now we have to pay our bills, he says. Others in government want to make their approval to borrow more money (I guess from China) to service the debt contingent on large spending cuts to stop increasing the debt. The president’s response to this is, he will not have the country’s obligation to pay its debt held hostage to a demand to reduce the growth of its debt. Huh? Reducing the growth of the debt is a conversation I’m willing to have, he says, but not now, down the road.

Oh, I see.

Reduced to a household metaphor graspable by The Folks: “Honey, we need to get another credit card just to pay the interest on our other ten credit cards, and later we can discuss whether or not to continue eating out every night.”

That kind of logic would go over like a fart in church at most supper tables. But coming from Washington, we are all supposed to just smile and say the president is doing the best he can, this isn’t a problem of his creation, he inherited it from the bad guys, the ones bent on destroying the country and its reputation, therefore don’t listen to them.

At this point in my schizophrenic conversation the principle and practical diverge. In principle, I agree with the bad guys, we ought to reduce the size of government to lessen its influence over our personal and economic liberties. The most obvious way to accomplish this is to severely reduce the amount of money the government spends. But in practice, how much should I really care about something I have no power to change? Indeed, what if not changing it, but encouraging it, for the rest of my years in this life is in my own interest? After all, in the next decade the government will begin mailing me and Happy Wife social security checks. Before long (by law) the government will be our primary health insurance provider. If principled arguments for severe austerity include the reduction or delay of these things to me and my wife, why should I agree with them? The usual come back argument is that I should think beyond myself and consider our children’s future, how they will have to bear the economic burden of continued profligacy in government. Except we don’t have children. Our concern may extend to our nieces, and possibly their children, but beyond that relationship my concern rapidly fades to good luck.

Anyway, an ongoing conversation with myself, which lately usually occurs during winter walks in a world of white.

Summit Lake, 75 miles south of Anchorage:

BIGGER.

The Packers were like a boat that could not get on step. They were close — hell it was 24-24 late in Q3. But leave the bow flapping in the wind too long and you begin to take on water, left vulnerable to the rogue wave. Plus no defense in the world is prepared for a quarterback to rush 200+ yards.

In other words, maybe next year.

At Mr. Lileks blog he points to a recent comment made by Brent Musburger during televised coverage of a college football game, a comment that evidently caused a brief kerfuffle. To wit:

“Wow, I’m telling you quarterbacks: You get all the good-looking women,” Musburger said as the camera focused on Webb, sitting with McCarron’s mother. “What a beautiful woman. Wow!”

Some found the remarks from Musburger, 73, out of line. On Tuesday, ESPN released this statement: “We always try to capture interesting storylines and the relationship between an Auburn grad who is Miss Alabama and the current Alabama quarterback certainly met that test. However, we apologize that the commentary in this instance went too far and Brent understands that.”

Mr Lileks opined: “It’s permitted to praise in beauty your own group and above, but not below; then it’s creepy.”

My thought: If Ruth Buzzi had been nearby to whack Musburger over the head with a purse said kerfuffle might never have occurred. Or, if instead of Ms. Alabama, he’d said Betty White is hot, who would have cared?

Good grief this is Brent Musburger we’re talking about. What he said is about as creepy as a grandpa sneakin’ a smooch with his grandson’s wife on Thanksgiving.

Over three years ago I moved to Alaska for the third time to live and work, from Cleveland where I earned my PhD, where I had traveled to from Alaska, where I had moved to from California to live and work for sixteen years, sans one, during which time I lived and worked in Santa Fe, NM before returning to Alaska. Straightforward, right? Over these twenty three years I owned (or co-owned) and lived in seven different residences: two condos and five houses, including the present house. Make that eight if you include our recently purchased beach house. Throw in the temporary places where I’ve lived, at least four, and you’ll understand why even the mere thought of moving again causes my face to transmogrify into a Munchian Scream.

Before this third (and final) move back to Alaska I told Happy Wife that I intend to take my final breath in this house. This pleased her greatly — the staying put part, not the final breath.

Except for far northern Alaska, the rest of the state has been on a cooling trend the first decade of this century.

Paper here.

Based on mean values obtained from temperature stations located around Alaska (n=20), there was a 1.3° centigrade decrease in temperature from 2000 to 2010, which the authors pointed out is a pretty large value for a single decade. While they also concede that 11 points is a small number of observations with which to compute a trend, and I would agree, evidently the trend held even when monthly values at the individual stations were considered. Personally, I’m not too impressed with the fit of that line to the data. But then again I don’t think one could fit a least-squares line to these data (with equal or greater r-value) having a slope of the opposite sign, which would indicate a warming trend over the decade.

Curiously, the mean temperature in Alaska had been increasing (from background mean) since about 1976 (see Figure 2), so this past decade is a reversal of that trend, something the authors postulate may be due to a change in polarity of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).

Okay then.

All I know for sure is it’s unmistakeably winter outside, has been since November, and Maui in February can’t come soon enough!

Reaction to a Viqueen fumble recovered by the Packers…

… while enjoying a bowl of homemade roasted tomato soup dolloped with sour cream and avocado, and cheese bread smeared with spicy red stuff.

 

Wine was also in evidence.

Tony dumb-gee, the “analyst” on the pregame show, said he expected the Viqueens would win the game because their starting QB was out, and the Packers would be flustered by a Joe Webb offense. They were flustered alright. It was late in Q3 when the Packers were up 24-3 that the flusteredness must’ve really sunk in.

On to San Francisco.