Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Santa Claus and Jesus Christ

My sister in law mentioned yesterday how Santa Claus and Jesus kind of fall into the same category for the unbeliever—bearded guys in the sky with magical powers. That got me thinking about this Santa myth we tell our children. I’m not a Santa hater (though Santa is just one ‘n’ away from Satan), I love stories, eggnog, and presents. But as a parent who believes in the second bearded guy in the sky and wants to teach that belief to his children, the way we trick our kids into believing the Santa story gives me pause.

The cynical interpretation of the story is that wonderful and spiritual things are naive and should only be believed until the third grade. Parents tell their kids something the parents know isn’t true and in third grade (or highschool for me) the kid wakes up to find Mom and Dad stuffing the stockings. Most kids aren’t traumatized by this realization, that’s not the problem. But this process of discovery and loss of faith sets a precedent in relation to other spiritual things. Since Santa and Jesus share the same holiday and profession (judgment and joyspreading), does the death of one weaken belief in the other?
An alternate interpretation of why we tell our kids the Barbie and Legos under the tree are from Santa is that we want them to believe that powerful forces of justice and good, though invisible, are at work in the world. We want them to experience firsthand the tingly feeling of wonder when you’re connected to something bigger than yourself, and to understand the concept of anonymous giving. It’s a myth that asks us to question what our parents tell us, but since it is such a benevolent deceit, we can accept the allegory without feeling betrayed.

So, is Santa a faith-sucking tool of atheist capitalism, or a friendly pagan prophet and type of Christ? I think he likely is somewhere in between, but it was sweet to hear Ingrid ask last night if I could tell Santa to be quiet so he wouldn’t be too loud and wake up Henry.

Here's a video of our friend Has trying really hard to believe in Santa: Hectic Hobo.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

98 degrees

Beginning latitude: 64.8 degrees N
Latitude at destination: 37.8 degrees N
Beginning temperature: -35 degrees F
Temperature at destination: 65 degrees F
Total degrees traveled: 27 N
Total degrees gained: 98 F


Thursday, November 1, 2012

Freedom Toast

In the last few days before the election I'm sure you all must be wondering, "How can I make better French toast?" Or you might be asking yourself, "What am I going to do with this rock-hard loaf of artisan bread I forgot while listening to another report about Ohio." Well, today, loosen your belt of civic duties a few notches, and let me come in like the federal government to solve both problems for you.

 In case you've ever wondered what they call French toast in France, it's called pain perdu. This simply means "lost bread." Like so many inventions it was invented accidentally (like sticky notes and silly putty), by a man named Pierre who forgot a baguette under a pile of berets and miniature Eiffel Tower replicas. A week later, while trimming his mustache, Pierre found the bread and was about to throw the crusty mess out his window when a voice inside said, "Why don't you soak it in egg and fry it up." You don't need to wait a full week to enjoy the fruits of Pierre's forgetfulness, any bread you didn't get around to finishing will do.
  1. Saw through the fossilized loaf with a serrated knife so it doesn't crack.
 2. Move any hungry babies out of reach (slobber might be a good softening agent though)
 2. Soak the bread in a mix of egg and milk (3 eggs and one half cup milk works for half a baguette). You can also add vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, flaxseed or whatever you fancy. The longer you soak the bread the softer it will be (I like a short soak for chewy toast).
 3. Melt half a tablespoon of butter in a pan and cook the soaked slices.
4. Top with butter, syrup, and powdered sugar and serve with milk and a tiny picture of your candidate of choice.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Spam for posterity

Last night Blogger sent me notification of three new comments. "I love an audience," I thought to myself and quickly clicked the links.

Where can the most germs be present in an business office atmosphere? The solution will be the washrooms . . . The greater specifics it is possible to glean the better position ...

Gua Hu wrote in a style allied with the early Chinese instruction manualists, Google translators, and my stats textbook.

It truly is crucial to make sure the footwear that you will be donning are cleanse so as to not produce a large amount of consideration that ... your flip flops to lose form.An additional method may be the usage of an outdated toothbrush as well as a detergent that cleans properly. 

I started to wonder how carefully Mrs. Hu had read the posts since her responses didn't seem totally pertinent. Still I read on.

It is a very good thing on account of the truth that a single does not have to keep on investing on getting new kinds every single at times.Another excellent technique will be the use of beach front sand and salty water. This can be a technique that not everyone is accustomed to nevertheless it operates miracles. Once you scrub the white havaianas using the beach front sand and rinse them with the salt water, you happen to be likely to find out an excellent big

Then it occurred to me that Gua's comments weren't a direct response to my posts at all. It was freestyle poetry inspired by the tone, not the content of my work. The unlikely sentence structure and word choice shook me from  my dead-eyed screen stare and I felt like applauding.

Don't believe the Obamney debates. Spam, not fossil fuel, is our country's greatest under-exploited resource. Every day millions of pages of trash text are generated, containing thousands of evocative metaphors that are effectively anonymous and free for the taking. As Bono says, "Every artist is a cannibal, every poet a thief." Spam is a robbers feast.


The origin of the term Spam is indeed this Monty Python sketch (for real).

There are different flavors in this genre, some more fruitful than others. Some messages are just a link or a single phrase while others draw you into a world where you are the millionaire you've always known you deserved to be. Your Dutch uncle is finally dead, you have a fortune in Japanese Yen, your sexual performance is enhanced naturally, and everybody urgently needs your password since your PayPal account is perpetually compromised. If you get a lot of spam and are feeling vengeful, check out this This American Life episode about scam-baiting, where a couple spammees become the spammers.

Here are a few examples from my "Spam for Posterity" email folder:

Spam type: Terse and mysterious
From: Sir Aben Ahmed
Subject line: Re
Message: Did you receive my last email? 
Comments: Sometimes less is more. A short lie is easier to This one had me looking for old messages.

Spam type: Money request
From: Dr. Sun
Subject line: Urgent help needed
Message: Hello, I'm sorry I didn't inform you about my trip to Madrid Spain. Unfortunately I was mugged at gunpoint, at the hotel park I'm staying. My cell phone, cash and credit card was stolen in the process and I immediately file a report to the Police, but they seems to be taking things too slow. My flight leaves in few hrs from now and I need a quick loan to settle the hotel bills and my transport to the airport. I will reimburse immediately I arrive back home safely. I hope you get this on time and get back to me asap
Comment: I know Dr. Sun and this came from her account. It is unfortunate that she didn't tell me about her trip to Madrid or mention my name in her urgent request.


Spam type: Money offer
From: Mrs Elizabeth Etters
Subject: Dear Friend
Message: Dear Friend I am Mrs Elizabeth Etters, a devoted christian. I have a
foundation/Estate uncompleted {worth sum of USD 2,142,728.00 Dollars} and need
somebody to help me finish it because of my health,Everything is available.

Comment: Like in life, people appealing to your religious sympathies by emphasizing shared religious or cultural beliefs are probably trying to cheat you. Also, "uncompleted" is the stupid way of saying incomplete.

Spam type: Professional development
From: Vladimir A. Kontar
Subject Line: Invitation to be Author of Book
Message: Dear Colleague, We are preparing the book "Imbalance of Water in Nature":
Part 1: What is the Imbalance of Water in Nature?
1.1. The theory of the Imbalance of Water in Nature.
1.2. Creators of the Imbalance of Water in Nature.
1.3. Measurement and modeling for the imbalance of water in nature.
Comment: This message went on and on with specific requirements and polished text, including fake URLs from the American Geophysical Union. I've been surprised by the amount of "we want to publish your research" spam I've received. Just another reminder that they know what you hope for, and what you are insecure about and therefore likely to be gullible about!

I've left Gua's free-association poetry in the comments of Shaggy Manes, Obligatory Presidential Debate Post, and Winter Biking, though I wouldn't recommend clicking on the links therein.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Winter Biking in Alaska

While I stomped back and forth between the office and the lab yesterday the snow finally stuck. Ingrid and I went sledding last night and it's supposed to fall until Thursday. I've gotten two phone calls since the snow started from summer bikers interested in pedaling through the winter. There are lots of great winter biking resources out there (check out the Fairbanks Cycle Club's site as a place to start) but everybody does it a little differently so I thought I'd show you what works for me here in Fairbanks Alaska.
For the torso and legs, you need less covering than you probably think. Heat buildup can be just as problematic as heat retention so proper venting is as important as insulation. I basically wear the same outfit over my core from 20 above to 50 below. I put on whatever I'm going to wear at the office and then put this stuff on top (from the top clockwise): 
  1. Marmot winter jacket. A real winter shell with pit-zips is better than a rain jacket or windbreaker because the fabric doesn't get brittle in the extreme cold. 
  2. Stoic Softshell pants. I like softshell pants because they stretch and breath (and keep the naughty bits from dangling too far in the frosty air).
  3. Safety vest. Brightens any ensemble.
  4. Patagonia R3 fleece. Any breathable midlayer will do.
Your hands and feet will need more protection than you think. I tried all sorts of mittens and boots and finally settled on this setup.
  1. Michael Jackson shiny liner gloves. The tinsel in these is supposed to reflect your body heat back. I just think it adds fabulous when you do jazz hands. Any thin glove will work.
  2. OR Alti Mitts. Lots of people use Pogies (overmitts that attach to your handlebars). I have a couple different bikes that I switch between and none have flat handlebars so I prefer mittens. I called up my friends Chad and Christie who had just climbed Denali and asked for the warmest mitten they knew of and they recommended these. My fingers still get a little cold below -30 but I have XLs and they are big enough that I can make a fist to warm the digits. I also just picked up a pair of Mountain Hardwear Masherbrum mittens that seem like they will be as warm as the Alti Mitts, though they are a lot bulkier.
  3. Addidas neoprene overshoe. Pretend like you're the cool kid on the block and keep your toes warm. I add these below -20.
  4. Lake insulated winter cycling shoes. The key here is room for socks. I got a size 13.5 (I usually wear size 11) and they are perfect with a thin sock liner, one normal pair of wool socks, and one mountaineering pair. They also look like Batman's personal cycling shoe. If I ever get tired I just look down and pretend like Bruce Wayne is pedaling the bike. 


  1.  After snotting in a plethora of balaclava's I finally found one that worked for me made by Turtle Fur. Key features are: an eye opening small enough your goggles will cover it, a breathing flap that blocks the wind to your lips but allows free air flow, and a neck long enough to tuck into your fleece. This model had all those features, though I did sew a twisty tie into the breathing flap to keep it from clamshelling shut in the wind (you feel like a drowning scuba diver when your air gets cut off and your hands are covered). On a side note, many people claim you can frostbite your lungs. Given the tiny volume of air and large thermal volume of mouth and lung tissue I think this is physically impossible. I think that some people have problems breathing in extreme cold due to the desiccated air (cold air can't hold much water) which dries out their mouth and throat. A mouth flap will trap some warm moist air near your lips and do a world of good. I wear this setup when it's lower than 15. Warmer than that I wear normal sunglasses with a piece of windproof material duct-taped to the bridge as a nose guard, and a headband to protect my ears. Lots of people wear less than I do on their face/eyes but my skin is sensitive.            
  2. Scott goggles. The key here is that they interface with your helmet and cover the whole Balaclava hole (I ended up with cute little triangle frostbite on my temples when I tried to skimp). 
  3. Giro Omen helmet. I like using this ski helmet because it has adjustable vents you can open and close even with mittens on. Lots of people just use a conventional bike helmet over their balaclava. Most helmets are adjustable enough that you won't need to size up to fit your thin hat or balaclava.
Me with my custom nose flap glasses. See, cold weather safety can be functional and fashionable.

Lots of different lights out there. I wanted something bright and rechargeable that works at any temperature.
  1. Cygolite Hotshot. This is the best taillight out there in my opinion. It recharges with a USB cable and lasts for weeks on a single charge. It also has an adjustable blink (you choose how fast you want it to be). It's twice as bright as anything in its price range. You can usually find one on Amazon for $30.
  2. Ultrafire C1 from www.dx.com. Bike specific headlights can cost $500. This flashlight costs $17.70 and ships for free. It takes 18650 rechargeable lithium ion polymer batteries so you have to pick up a pair of batteries and a charger (an extra $10). It puts out almost as much light as a car headlight and lasts two hours on a charge (on high mode). Make sure to get a bike mount for it so you can put it on your handlebar or helmet. The C1 isn't the only one that works from dx, just find something that is well reviewed and it will be fine. The first time I went to the site I was sure they were going to steal my credit card number but they are actually totally reputable (though shipping from Hong Kong does take several weeks). They also make bike specific lights that review well.
  3. I also put together a helmet mounted light with a battery pack that I can put in my pocket. I like having a helmet light so I can see around corners and flash cars that I think don't see me.
  4. Third Eye Pro helmet mirror. Get one. After using it you'll feel naked without it (and naked at -40 only feels good for a minute). This lets you watch each car as it passes and decide if you need to get farther off the road. Seriously, get one.
  5. Another Cygolite for the helmet. I had a man stop one time and tell me he thought I was a cop because of all the flashing. People slow down when they think you're a cop.

The last item of discussion is your bike. You don't need a fatbike or a 29er to commute through the winter. A normal mountain bike (or even touring bike) will be totally sufficient if you pay attention to two things.
  1. First thing is your tires. I rode my first two winters on studded tires (Nokian extremes) and my second two on conventional mountain bike tires. To be honest I didn't notice much of a difference. Here in Fairbanks where we encounter more packed snow than ice normal mountain bike tires work fine. They also work better than studded tires if you're going to be riding on snow-covered trails as well since they are softer and stay on top of the snow better. You do want something with aggressive tread, and if you get into mucky stuff remember to let some air out (lower pressure will vastly improve handling).
  2. Second is your freehub. What's a freehub you say? It's the part in your rear wheel that lets your bike coast. Take away your freehub and you've got a fixed gear bicycle (and nobody wants that right). In extreme cold the grease in your freehub sometimes gets so thick that it starts acting like a fixed gear (your pedals will rotate as you roll forward even if you aren't pedaling). Most hubs won't fail even at very low temperatures, they just get stiff. If you're not picky about how your bike rides you are probably fine. As a bike snob, in my opinion it is worth changing the grease in your freehub. You can do this yourself conventionally (freehub winterization) or with Morningstar's Freehub Buddy but either option is mechanically involved. If you're not comfortable taking apart your bottom bracket and front hub then don't mess with the rear hub. It'll cost you $30-50 bucks to have a bike shop do it but it's money well spent. 
I remember the first time I biked to campus at -30 along Farmer's Loop. Road conditions, air temp, dark, and big mean pickup trucks had me super intimidated and nervous. It's normal to feel that way at the beginning but you'll find after just a couple rides that with a little preparation, biking at -40 can be a comfortable and fun adventure.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Obligatory presidential debate post

It's hard to really listen to both sides in a presidential debate if you strongly sympathize with one contender from the beginning. But if you can suspend your preference (if only for two minutes), while the debate won't likely change your vote, it might change your life.

In the debate last night I tried to sit in the middle and feel the wind. In this zen state, detached from what I've been taught to think about big or small government, the lukewarm reasoning washed over my tired mind like a jet in a hot-tub. About a minute into the response of either candidate I could feel a deep-down shift as the hodgepodge of technically true treatise gelled and got traction. It's like the "key change" moment in a Country song after the third verse or the rest before the hook of a good Pop song--it gives you shivers.

"That's right, I don't want a 'trickle-down' federal solution. My grass wants roots!"
"Interesting, we do need a balanced approach. He's just too extreme."

High level politicians use language like a canoe paddle, quietly slipping it into your mind to push you forward and change your direction.

In last week's New Yorker, Jill Lepore's article The Lie Factory told the story of the first political consulting firm, Campaigns Inc, in 1933. Among other things, they defeated Upton Sinclair (socialist writer gone Democratic politician) when he ran for governor of California. Campaigns Inc also helped turn public opinion against Harry Truman's public health care plan. Before the smear campaign, nine out of ten voters supported the plan. After their ads, four out of five opposed it. Lepore quotes Clem Whitaker, co-founder of Campaigns Inc,

"The more you have to explain, the more difficult it is to win support. . . . Words that lean on the mind are no good, they must dent it. . . . A wall goes up when you try to make Mr. and Mrs. Average American Citizen work or think."

So back to the leaning and denting of last night's debate. To be honest, I loved it. It was like after preparing both the "for" and "against" cases in high school debate class. You know more about the issue and are less confident of your opinion. One of the problems in finding the best route forward is the surplus of data, polls, and statistics. There are so many real patterns in our complex socio-economic system that multiple cogent but mutually exclusive lines of reasoning can be developed. The system is too big to be understood all at once, and piecemeal analysis almost always misleads. Pair this with the fact that we, Mr. and Mrs. American Citizen, inherent most of our opinions from our parents and base most of the rest on sound bites and talking points, and you've got a strange flavor of democracy.


My Jr. High journalism teacher and family friend Lisa often quoted Mencken, "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple . . . and wrong."

To my surprise, at an hour of nodding along with both candidates I actually felt a little bit excited about whoever is president next. Surely some of this is because of too much canoe paddle in the brain, but maybe some of it is high school debate wisdom. I like the iPhone in Obama and the Blackberry in Romney. I like the Stake President in Romney and the law professor in Obama. I like that Obama is Black. I like that Romney is Mormon.

At the end of the day, I see energy and climate change as the most pressing issues facing our country and the world so I will vote for Obama. Also Romney's "Avenger's" style position on ramping up military spending turns me off. So there we have it. I will vote, you will vote, and a couple other people will vote and the person who gets the most might become president.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Dawkins vs. the Book of Mormon

I remember walking down the streets of Santa Maria in southern California as a week-old missionary. One afternoon a twenty-something in a convertible with his friends drove by and shouted,
"The Book of Mormon isn't true because it's written in old English. They didn't talk that way when John Smith wrote it!"

Elder Root, a sturdy, dark-haired, Canadian held his hands out and looked at the sky, "I guess it's not true! Thanks for letting us know!"

I've heard the archaic English argument several times since then, most surprisingly from the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Dawkins used this as his opening challenge to the Book of Mormon in an interview with Brandon Flowers on a Norwegian talk show last week.

There are plenty of legitimate questions to ask about the veracity of the Book of Mormon (and the existence of God) but that one is the religious equivalent of challenging an evolutionary biologist by asking, "if humans evolved from monkeys then why are monkeys still around"?

Yes the Book of Mormon was translated into archaic English not current in 1830. This was a choice (conscious or not) of the translator Joseph (not John) Smith to match the style of the the King James version of the bible. In fact the KJV itself was translated into archaic rather than contemporary English for the time, taking the Book of Mormon's linguistic style further back in time. "Thou," "thee," "verily," and "it came to pass" were nary heard on the bonnie streets of London in the 17th century. The translators chose to use old-sounding language to lend reverence and mystery to the text.

So why does such a shallow question resonate with such a highly intelligent man? Why doesn't he choose one of the many sophisticated and relevant arguments against the book?

One answer might be that he doesn't care. This may have been the first anti-Mormon observation he encountered, and since he knew from the beginning he wasn't going to believe in the book, this argument seemed like a slam dunk. But Richard Dawkins does care, to the point of writing books about why people believe in God.

I think that Dawkins has fallen prey to the fallacy of the single cause (also causal oversimplification). Dawkins believes that people believe in God for only one reason: to explain mysterious processes (lightning, earthquakes, the human mind etc.). In this worldview, because science explains (or will explain) all natural phenomena, it eliminates the need to invent God. Dawkins is an excellent evolutionary biologist (though I side with Gould on matters of contingency and morality) and his scientific explanations for seemingly impossible natural patterns are good and sound. From Aurora Borealis to human consciousness, we are learning more and more that seemingly impossible complexity and beauty can arise naturally, making it less compelling to say "there must be a God, otherwise how could an ... angler fish exist?"

Cool fish no doubt, but not the primary reason I believe in God. (Photo credit: THEODORE W. PIETSCH/UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON)

While Dawkins has effectively shown how asymmetric natural pressure can push us up "mount improbable," how has he overlooked other foundations of faith? I think that because he believes his position is so obviously correct, he can't empathize with the believer. This assumption of ignorance or irrationality has rendered him culturally autistic, unable to imagine the minds of believers to explore the basis of their belief. Because of this, he hasn't touched on the thousands of other reasons why people believe in the reality of a spiritual world.

I believe in God (and the veracity of the Book of Mormon) because of personal experience and the sensations of joy, gratitude, wonder, and universal love I feel when I consider and investigate these topics. Part of my belief does stem from an inability to explain certain mysterious events in my life (see my post on Coincidence) and as such that part of my belief is vulnerable to explanation. I like that. I like being vulnerable to new information and understanding. I like how doubt provides a humble and empowering lookout from which to examine my beliefs.

For the record I believe that evolution by natural selection is the mechanism by which all animals (including humans) arose, and I believe that God knows each of us and desires our happiness.

So Dr. Dawkins, if you read this, consider these two links my rebuttal. Here's a post my cousin Brigham wrote about Why we need the Book of Mormon. And here's a song my friend Matt and I wrote up at Toolik Field Station on the North Slope a few years ago called The Mormon Code. Matt is from North Carolina and had heard that Mormons owned the Nintendo codes and that we funded the church by selling them to school children.

This picture was in the background slideshow at the talent show while we played the song. In case you were wondering, we won the talent show that year. And the year after. And the year after that.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Shaggy Manes

Becca and Dana, two of my new labmates found some Shaggy Mane mushrooms (Coprinus comatus) growing outside our trailer this afternoon. Since the ephemeral fungus doesn't last more than a day and given there were too many for them to eat, they let me in on the secret.

It was good I collected a pound or two because it's been a while since the Abbott family has been grocery shopping. We were down to pickled asparagus, dried peaches, condiments, and prenatal vitamins. We made two wild mushroom dishes with scavenged ingredients: a toasted dijon mustard mushroom sandwich, and a green chili cream of mushroom soup (we found some bread ends and a can of chilis behind the stale marshmallows).

As I fried the shaggies Rachel observed, "They smell like European B.O."
"You're totally right," I marveled as I glanced down to double check that I wasn't wearing some German's football jersey.

 While we cooked, Ingrid set up a parking lot with the assortment of forty year old matchbox cars Grandma gave her. In the prayer she said, "Thank you for this day, thanks for all these cars, amen."

As we ate Rachel shook her head and said, "Henry deserves better than dried peaches and asparagus." He seems pretty happy with what he's getting for now though.

The kitchen drain clogged from cleaning the mushrooms' dirty bits but I got it flowing again with a science-fair volcano by pouring some baking soda and vinegar down there. 

Monday, September 10, 2012

Utah State Police Blotter

Though we love the frontier charm of Fairbanks, it's hard not to miss the peace of placid and pastoral Logan Utah (the safest city in America two out of three years). I get Utah State University's weekly bulletin and happened to click on the police blotter last week. Read to the end to get all the lurid details: wild tug of wars, suspicious breath mints, rumors of skateboarders, and Redbull Girls indiscriminately distributing caffeinated beverages in the USU Police Blotter.




Monday, September 3, 2012

The Equinox Marathon

A marathon is not a good event for the procrastinator. Yet, here I am, two weeks away from race day, four runs into my training schedule. I guess I have been doing a lot of standing at the lab lately, and that uses your legs and core muscles right? At least my shoes are broken in from the last (and first) marathon I ran, the KSL News in Salt Lake six years ago. For that one, my brothers Nate and Joe told me the day I got home from my two-year mission, that they had signed me up for a marathon in three weeks. The course was all down hill and I stil couldn't walk down stairs for a week afterward. The Equinox in Fairbanks is billed as the second hardest in the U.S. and looks like this:

I was going to go for a long run tonight but it took us longer to dig the potatoes, then we had band practice, and then we had to eat the potatoes over at the Gianni's. Now it's sprinkling and I really should watch War of the Worlds so I can take it back to Redbox tomorrow. Anyways I still have almost two weeks and I should be fine, I did watch quite a few of the running events in the Olympics.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Be Bigfoot at your own risk

One summer night in 2003 Brittany and I were looking for a watch I'd lost next to Diversion Dam up Provo Canyon. A Bigfoot pounced out of the darkness at me and I bolted a quarter mile in full scream before realizing that Bigfoot doesn't wear white sneakers (or thinking of Brittany). As I walked back to collect the broken pieces of my dignity, the Bigfoot took off its head and I I recognized the guy who cleaned the popcorn machine at the Wynnsong theater. He was wearing a ghillie suit, just like this Bigfoot for whom it didn't go so well: Man killed while trying to create Bigfoot sighting.

On a different subject, my mother in law just turned 70 and Rachel's whole family was up here for the celebration.
Here are some more pics on Facebook.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Only touch dead birds with your right hand

This morning I hiked out to lake 395 and passed by a dead owl. 

Thinking an owl talon would make a pretty cool talisman, I pulled out my Leatherman and cut off one of the feet. An impossible number of plump maggots erupted from the severed limb and I dropped the rotting bird on the tundra.

Then I remembered that I had a big gouge in my hand from falling into the Copper River last week. The greasy forgotten-turkey smell on my hands made me wonder where else my open wound had been.

I'm up at Toolik with an Australian film crew shooting a documentary on tipping aspects of the climate system. Yesterday we sampled and shot the Stinking Bluffs, a 100 foot tall eroding permafrost cliff and I stuck my hands into the 50,000 year old mud. Since I lived through H1N1 I wasn't too worried about the mammoth flu or other Pleistocene plagues.

Then I looked back at the wriggling bird carcass and realized that it wasn't even an owl, it was a Northern Harrier - a cool bird in its own right, but no owl.

 After rinsing my hand off in the lake I went over to the Kuparuk River to sample some ice-wedge degradation that Mike told me about yesterday.

While I was looking for the best place to collect water, a bull caribou trotted over. He came within 20 yards (which surprised me since the Slope is crawling with bow hunters right now), sniffed my draft and ambled away towards the road. After filling my bottles I saw that the bull had stopped traffic in both directions crossing the Haul Road between two trucks of hunters.

"I guess that was the last video anyone will ever take of that one," I mourned, hoping I wasn't the cause of his arrowy death. To my surprise, the two groups of hunters just sat there, neither side knowing who should take the shot (plus you can't shoot from the road). The bull walked calmly between the bumpers and onto the tundra on the opposite side. Once he was walking away, the "it's getting away" instinct shook the hunters out of their stupor and they piled out of the pickups like maggots out of an owl's leg. They gave chase but the bull immediately and effortlessly put 100 yards between them. He tilted his head back in that caribou way and looked really please, as if he was thinking, 

"I hope some cows saw that."

Friday, August 10, 2012

Hold my hand like a North Korean

The dental office we clean gets Time Magazine, so every Monday and Wednesday I try to complete my tasks faster than Rachel so I can get a few articles in. A couple months ago the cover article was on Kim Jong Un, North Korea's new Supreme Leader.

North Korea doesn't have the internet (just a state-run intranet), they still have a Propaganda and Agitation Department, a full half the population is in the military, and ten percent of the country's 22 million starved to death in four years of famine in the late 90s (while I was worried about getting in enough Nintendo time between my four older siblings). The number of dead is unknown but varies from 800,000 to 3.5 million. More on North Korea.

Bill Powell's article talked about how Kim went to school in Switzerland, and how, since he was a distant third in line to ascend to power, he spent a lot of time playing basketball and rollerblading. Then his oldest brother got caught with a fake passport trying to go to Disneyland Tokyo and his father decided the second in line was too girly so ... enter Kim Jong Un. After seeing the picture below I wrote this song:







Thursday, August 2, 2012

The four most important news stories of the last ... this morning


While eating my Cheerios this morning the following four stories caught my eye (I love Fluent News):

The longstanding climate-change skeptic Richard Muller, a Koch brothers funded physicist, announced that after investigating the latest data it is indeed clear that humans are causing the change and it will be bad for us if we don't act:









A throwback to conversations in high school debate class, the Pentagon has an elaborate "just in case China attacks us" battle plan. The strategy, called "Air-Sea Battle" is the brainchild of a 91 year old and has gotten attention from congress now that China's defense spending almost equals a third of ours. The publication of the non-classified portion of the plan has ruffled China as well as several Asian allies:


Since Henry was born we've been the lucky recipients of unsolicited advice on vaccines, baby carriers, and, of course, breastfeeding. The adviser always says, "I've done a lot of research on it," which usually means "I've spent a lot of time in obscure forums collecting a biased cross section of personal opinion from people that had the same opinion as me from the beginning." It turns out the librarians were right and most medical advice on the internet is unreliable or dangerous:


And most importantly, Bella and Edward broke up. This is simultaneously thrilling and sad. Thrilling because we now know that Rupert Sanders is a werewolf and sad because cheating is lame: 

Friday, July 20, 2012

Impressions of the Motherland

Traveling in any foreign country (yes even Canada) brings national differences into focus. That said, comparing two countries as culturally vast as the US and Russia after a ten day trip is only marginally better than rating countries by number of Pogs players. In any case, I was never one to let lack of perspective get in the way of telling stories, so here I go.

When I moved to Alaska from Utah, the scale of everything (wilderness and human destruction) shocked me. Alaska is Russia's Utah. The flight from from Moscow over the Urals to Siberia was about five minutes of city and five hours of mountains, rivers, and tundra. Each uninhabited time zone we crossed seemed to take us back 10,000 years. By the time Salekhard came into view on the bank of the braided Ob river I expected to see mammoths and ground sloths.


Sergei Zimov wasn't at the conference (the famous Russian scientist working to reestablish ice-age mega mammals at his Pleistocene Park in northern Siberia) but we did see this lone mammoth gazing on the tundra.

One enduring impression of Russia was that there were lots of rules and very little enforcement. The rules were there out of convention and seemed to fill only a customary role. This principle applied to everything from traffic laws in Moscow to conference instructions. When we landed in Salekhard we were told, "It is impossible to participate in the conference without registration. You must surrender a digital copy of your presentation at time of registration." We didn't realize that this severe pronouncement was intended just to reassure us that everything was under control and that we could get back to doing whatever we wanted (indeed we were never asked about registration and I submitted my presentation five minutes before giving it). Even at national landmarks like Red Square the large number of guards couldn't outweigh the impression that they were all about to look the other way. This made for a simultaneously more authoritarian and libertarian atmosphere than in the States. 
Russia is the real land of the free where you can hop out of the tour bus and then climb giant Soviet helicopters (notice the mosquitoes in the foreground and Nicolas and I on the real wheel). 

Clubbers dragging themselves from place to place seeking more substances and activities to extract pleasure from their bodies could help themselves to free nitrous oxide balloons from the trunk of this green sedan outside a club called The Afterparty. Full sunlight at 3am does make for an unflattering after-Afterparty stagger home though.

Another impression from Russia was a conspicuous lack of irony. While irony doesn't translate well between cultures in general, I definitely felt that Russians were exceptionally unself-conscious in regards to ceremony, decoration, fashion, and drama. After a police escort from the airport, twelve welcome speeches during the opening ceremonies, and a troop exotic dancers greeting us at the boat launch, I started to realize that there was very little understated or subtle about this place. Several times a day I wondered, "How did no-one stop and ask themselves 'is this a little too much?'" Well, as Cody says, "If something's worth doing, it's worth overdoing."

It's hard to look this good and still not catch your heels in the cement cracks.

Pay no attention to the Bobcat.

The crest of Yamal and a monument to the Salekhard-Igarka railway (also known as the railroad of death)

I was also struck by the strong national identity and patriotism of the Russian people. I've been known to quote George Bernard Shaw who said, "Patriotism is a pernicious psychopathic form of idiocy," but in this case I actually found the patriotism to be moving. A young researcher named Olga talked about a need to recapture the great Russian vision to move into the future together as one people with no poor.
"The current government is trying to be too Western ... the goal should be to elevate the people as a whole, not to encourage individual greed and consumption," she explained as we sat in the lobby of the Yuribey hotel (an opulent symbol of consumerism). While the sheer number of monuments and memorials turned me off, the common sense of a shared present and future struck a strong ideological chord with me.

Olga was offended when I asked if she thought the election had been fair. "When you announce the results of an election in the U.S., no one questions if it was legitimate. Westerners assume everything in Russia is crooked. If you like him or not, Putin is president because 60% of the Russian people voted for him!" She mentioned the difficulty of maintaining a national identity across such a vast and varied landscape. "There is Moscow and St. Petersburg, and then there is Russia. Those cities are not Russia, they are something else."

             
Just a few of Salekhard's many monuments.

It's clear that Russia is still in an adolescent economic and cultural limbo between capitalism and communism, between democracy and dictatorship (though I suppose most governments, including ours, are too). Yamal in particular is interesting. It produces more than 90% of Russia's natural gas, and supplies gas to most of western Europe. As such, the Yamal government receives a huge amount of tax revenue from the megacorporation Gazprom. Dmitri, a Russian researcher currently living in the U.S., explained that Putin appoints a federal representative who oversees the dispensation of federal funds in this district. Since the representative is a presidential appointee, there is no direct accountability to the people of Yamal. So, if he decides the curbs should be made of red granite (which they were) it gets done, but if he doesn't see a need to renovate the blocks of low-income housing, they continue sinking into the permafrost.
            

I doubt any of them will be attending the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert

On the fourth day of the conference they trucked us up the gas-field road to look as some soil pits. The Gazprom truck's radiator was connected to a pipe that ran through the interior of the passenger compartment (a nice touch I'm sure in the winter time). 


Our lunch ration in its natural habitat. Aleksandr translated the contents for us, "Meat, meat, meat ... canned meat and soaked grains, refreshing drink powder, apple syrup, cooking stove, personal hand towel ..."

Even 14 time zones away from Toolik, the same dwarf birch, cotton grass, and cloud berry covered the ground. The most conspicuous ecological difference was the trees! Siberian Larch completely change the look and sound of the tundra. The whistle of wind in the trees gave me the shivers during the soil lectures. Larch are conifers (like spruce and pine) but they drop their needles each fall before the deep freeze sets in.

Back at the conference, several of the Russian presentations dealt with perils of permafrost degradation I had never considered. One talk in particular, with the translated title, "Thirteen Scary Stories" mentioned the millions of tons of radioactive and toxic waste dumped in near-surface permafrost throughout the former Soviet Union. When mass graves and old septic systems melt out there also is fear that currently eradicated diseases such as smallpox may be reintroduced and then transported to more populous regions. 

In case you were wondering, yes the palm tree is made of liver pate.

The final impression I couldn't help but notice as a natural scientist was the dismissal of anthropogenic climate change by many senior Russian scientists. No one implied that arctic climate wasn't changing (the warming in Yamal is obvious everywhere you look) but the opinion that the change is human-caused was treated as a floofy western idea. The question is very much alive with the Russian press as well. I was interviewed by a local news crew between sessions one day and the first question they asked me was, "So, what does your adviser think about the so-called global warming?" Andrew Slater, a prominent scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado, gave one of the plenary speeches about the state of permafrost research and was mistranslated by a Moscow newspaper as saying, "Now that we've looked at the models again, we realize that there is nothing to worry about." Fun :). 

Among the Russians skepticism fell generally along age and scientific discipline lines: most of the young, ecology or biogeochemistry researchers accepted climate change science and most of the older, physical permafrost, petrochemical, and engineering researchers rejected it. The Wikipedia climate change opinion by country page puts Russia above the United States by 3% in belief that climate change is human caused, but Russia scores way below the States on the question if climate change is a serious threat. Interesting. There is a general feeling of disenfranchisement among Russian researchers who feel that western journals are not open to data or papers generated by Russian scientists. I was involved in editing the translations of Russian papers submitted to the conference proceedings and do feel like there are definite cultural differences in both research and writing style that could act as a barrier for international publishing. The Russian papers had a more declaratory tone and a tighter focus on in depth site descriptions than comparable western papers which focus on mechanisms and hypothesis testing. Our cultural background affects more than just how tight our pants are, it can change how we approach basic scientific questions.

Well, despite a chaotic and constantly changing conference schedule, more fish and reindeer meat than I would normally eat in a decade, and a harrowing ferry crash where we collided with a semi truck, the Tenth International Conference on Permafrost was an incredibly rich and valuable experience culturally, professionally, and scientifically. Thanks Rachel and Mom for watching the kids while I was off in Siberia. 


Nothing like a thick slice of Greenland to clear your thoughts and ease the transition from East to West.