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Snow. We’d nearly forgotten. The weatherlady said expect 2″, maybe. Instead, 6-8″ fell. Ah, the folly of Man’s hubris, one minute we’re predicting the Higgs boson and the next we’re knee deep in unexpected snow.

Some viewed this as a setback; we accepted it as opportunity. We loaded the twelve year olds into the Subaru and up into the mountains we all went to enjoy a positively serene plod through the snow.

BIGGER.

Happy Wife broke trail:

 

BIGGER.

Back at the trail head we met a man visiting from Tahiti. He was holding a camera and gazing at the white mountains set against the bluebird sky. Speechless. I love that.

Despite this latest snowfall we’re well below our annual average, and north of us, closer to Fairbanks, the day-to-day temperatures this winter have been well above average, and so, like others, I think this may mean the ice on the Tanana River could break up earlier than usual, that is if you call this usual:

Source

With the possible exception of 1963, last year was the latest breakup in almost one hundred years — over 60 days after the vernal equinox (VE). There’s a celebration held every year in Alaska called the Nenana Ice Classic, which involves a contest to see who can guess the time when the tripod will fall on the Tanana River. $2.50 per guess, enter as often as you’d like. I’ve not participated in years past but this year I’m going to. The payout last year was $318,000.

You might think that a higher than average day-to-day winter temperature in Nenana would cause a breakup much earlier than “normal,” and that’s true, but low snow cover means the cold penetrates deeper into the ground which has the effect of delaying ice breakup. A multi-factorial problem for sure. There’s something about April 29th at 3:42 pm that’s speaking to me right now (39 days after VE).

Or I suppose I could ask the weatherlady when the ice will go out.

Mentioned.

Starts out cliche, gets more witty and amusing further in. I thought so anyway.

Dallas Seavey won the Iditarod after Jeff King, who it looked like would win, scratched at White Mountain.

Every team into Nome so far said this year’s race was unusually challenging on a number of fronts, injuries, snow-less trail conditions, and storms. The mushers are impressive, for sure, but you can’t say enough about their dogs.

Moving right along…

There was a report in the news recently around a paper published in Nature Medicine regarding a blood test that could predict whether or not an elderly person would develop Alzheimer’s related dementia (ALZ)^*. Setting aside the obvious question of why anyone would want to know in advance if they were likely to get ALZ, the publication had other problems. Most notably, the authors claim that the blood test is 90% accurate. Meaning, given a blood draw from 10 elderly people (70 or older), all of  whom let’s say would in fact go on to develop ALZ, the blood test would correctly identify 9 of them, and incorrectly conclude one of them would not go on to develop ALZ. In statistical lingo, the former are known as “true positives”, and the latter one a “false negative.” The test is based on the level in the blood of ten independent lipid molecules (fats) as measured by sensitive mass spectrometry, which, having considerable experience with it, appeared to me to be expertly done. In addition, how they arrived at those specific ten lipids was I think sound, but in any case unimportant to the following criticism.

Which was nicely and clearly explained . If you follow it, you’ll see that even under the most generous estimate using the paper’s author’s own numbers, the best accuracy the test could hope to achieve is 62%, not 90%. Using more realistic calculations, the accuracy falls to only 32%.

An even bigger concern if you ask me is what the author at that link pointed out, that even assuming a 90% accuracy rate, if you performed the test on 1000 random patients only 50 of whom would actually go on to develop ALZ (ALZ is estimated to have a 5% prevalence in the population), then 0.9*50 = 45, and 0.1*950 = 95, meaning the test would correctly identify 45 of the 50 (true positives) people who would in fact develop ALZ, but incorrectly identify 95 people predicted to develop ALZ (false positives). Even being generous and using the more likely accuracy of 62%, true positives = 31 and false positives = 361. Which would mean 361 people left to believe they’re destined to get ALZ.

I am beginning to understand and appreciate the public’s skepticism around many of the du jour medical claims being made lately. How this study got published in Nature Medicine is truly puzzling to me.

* Hat tip Derek Lowe @ In the Pipeline

Live helmet cam footage of the Last Great Race, courtesy of Jeff King ‘n team.

Told you we hardly have any snow (wait for 45 sec mark). And here you probably thought there’s nothing to this, getting pulled on a sled behind some happy Huskies for a thousand miles. Ha!

Happy Wife treated her friend on her birthday to a viewing of the Addams Family. Broadway musical directed by a four time award winner. Guessing this production won’t make it five. Both said it was awful, so bad I got a call at intermission to come get them. Humor was spare and uninspired, Morticia was not dressed pencil thin, which always made her appear to glide rather than walk, Cousin It was absent entirely (although if It appeared after intermission we’ll never know), and Gomez looked more like the villain in Bullwinkle, never stood on his head or flirtingly kissed Morticia’s arm. How could you leave that stuff out? That’s what Gomez did.

We drove directly home and watched the next episode of Breaking Bad together. Two more left to go and things are not looking good for Walter White ‘n Co..

Discovered an empty plastic bag on the kitchen floor that had been torn open: contents had been 8-10 milk bones. Got the “Who, me?” look from Harry.

Uploaded a few of my phone videos to Utube. This one, captured inside the Monterey Bay Aquarium on Cannery Row, reminds us that bodies in nature are much overrated. Who knew that merely attaching fins to a mouth would get the job done:

Later we met a gregarious seal on Fisherman’s wharf. He and friends smelled like golgotha, although otherwise appeared quite content. Here, nature chose to place a head on a mondo tube of fat, add some flaps for locomotion and call it good. Happy Wife heard cooing near the end:

On hearing that Obama’s reaction to this Ukraine thing will be measured and firm, someone opined somewhere that what this really means is he (Obama) is seriously considering de-friending Putin on facebook. That would probably work about as well as sanctions would in delivering a butt slap to Russia, possibly more effective. And yes, the president’s posture on international matters of certain gravity like the present one has left him open to the criticism: pantywaist. But surely the white house has to say something, right? Putin is violating international law and Ukrainian sovereignty, no? Well maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. But being told this by supposedly straight-faced American diplomats must have caused unprecedented belly laughter over vodkas at the Kremlin.

However…

If you ask me, and I realize you didn’t, one of the features of this President I quite like, contra McCain, is that he’s not recklessly shooting at anything that moves, as might an overeager child demonstrating the power of her first rifle [1], merely because he views himself as the world’s Great and Powerful Oz who must wield American force whenever and wherever he feels compelled to.

…

We’re back in Alaska!

The snow is all but gone again owing to sunny days and above freezing temperatures. Sorry Midwest, it was just your turn this winter is all.

So many pictures on the phone to prompt a sharing of experience I don’t know where to begin. I did hear a few ooh lah lahs on Happy Wife’s photo of defiance, so thank you for those, and I’ll add that I quite like that photo too, although surprisingly she (HW) cares a little less for it than I do, complaining that her hair at that moment didn’t look quite as nice as she would’ve liked it to look. “Seriously?” This is like saying the Great China Wall isn’t that awesome because look, over there, see that, a couple bricks are missing. Then again I accept I’m deeply biased in matters of devotion to my wife, possibly even to the point of pathology, of being uxorious.

Btw, she did eventually get over to the court house and receive her permit (#1208) for The Wearing Of Shoes With Heels In Excess Of Certain Limitations. Signed and dated by the city clerk! It never expires but so far as I can tell it is not transferable.

More later. Much to tend to this morning…

1. My brother in-law’s two girls, 9 & 7, received for Christmas last year a CZ .22 caliber rifle and a .410 shotgun, respectively. Although owing to their Father’s guidance neither is irresponsible around guns.

Presently visiting Carmel by the sea. More like in the sea today. The five hundred year drought decided to end last night. The dogs here wear raincoats, custom made. The median house price is $819,000, which may buy you a habitable space, or not. It may merely buy you something you’d need to tear down to the sill plate and start over again. In which case add another one point five million. There are no street addresses here and high heel wearers must obtain a permit from city hall and have it in their possession when clicking down a Carmel sidewalk (see unusual laws). Happy Wife, my little rebel with a cause, seen here wantonly flaunting the city ordinance:

Further south earlier this week we stopped to visit the elaphant seals, which, if you ask me, appear to be the result of crossing a shar pei with a sea cucumber:

_
Wine tasting in the central valley was sensational! We tasted at the Justin Winery and stayed overnight at the Inn on the property in a positively extravagant room overlooking a south-facing slope of Cabernet grapes. We wanted to reprise the stay we both enjoyed here nine years ago when we came to celebrate (re) meeting each other for the second time. Longish story.

Other tastings occurred at Tablas Creek, Opolo, Sanford, Au bon Climat, and Turley, where the Zinfandels have tannins like cashmere. As I indicated today is gray and dreary so I’m chilling in our room doing my best to update you (using WordPress on a Kindle must be like reading braille with the tip of your nose) whilst Her Happiness is out shopping with our friend Sheila who came down from San Jose yesterday to spend the night/day with us. I texted her Happiness to remind her to stop by city hall for a high heel permit, to avoid getting busted tonight when we go out for dinner.

Later.

Boarding area at ANC. My dress goal was to appear modern, a more couture companion for Happy Wife compared to my usual mufti. How did I do?

Vacation. Posting will be light. Talk among yourselves. Back 3/3.

Picked up Happy Wife’s dry cleaning today. Dry and Cleaning have always seemed to me to be opposed concepts. Using solvents other than water supposedly dates back to the time of the Romans, who used ammonia derived from animal urine to launder their wool togas. And to think I could have saved us $29.17 just by having Harry pee all over her pants and jacket.

Speaking of whom:

BIGGER.

A menacing beast, isn’t he?

Seconds later, “You did bring the treats today, right? Whaaa… No. Tell me you didn’t forget the treats.”

BIGGER.