The nice thing about modern construction techniques?

It turns the baby earthquakes from "Oh my Gosh!!" to "ooooh - cool! Again! Again!"

Sunday drive, Take II

Alaska is funny place.

More particularly, Alaskans are funny people - especially near "city Alaska." See, there's lots of research type people up here. Lots of recreational and professional pilots, outdoorsmen, oil folk, the occasional tech geek, OG hippies, so forth and so on. Stir that all up with the freedom-loving spirit of folk drawn to the remains of the last frontier, and well...

The end effect is that a Sunday jaunt one mountain range over has a very unique feel to it. Take equal parts "Sunday drive," "mountain meadow hike," "picnic," and "Star Trek landing party" and you're getting pretty close.



In the space of a couple hours, you'll be:

• landing on a backcountry strip carved out on the dirt - or clearing one by hand.
• watching beaver swim and listening to the cascade of waterfalls miles distant - themselves hundreds of feet high, but only distant white scratches in your binoculars.
• hearing one of the local sciency types talk about the ancient grasses of the place (looked like miniature bamboo - cool!)
• keeping an eye out for black bear
• hunting for the remains of a downed plane
  
• plinking at ice chunks floating out in a glacial lake
• cooing over butterflies going to sleep in the fireweed
  
• passing around reindeer (caribou) smoked sausage and modern hardtack along with more conventional staples
• and of course... having the most interesting conversations you ever did imagine. One minute it can be elementary education, the next sciencey lectures or pilot stories.

Alaska is without a doubt the most amazing place I ever have had the good fortune to live. The land itself is without peer. The population... even moreso.

What an amazing place to be.

Learn somethin' new every day...

So several of the ol' gang got together at one of the local rifle ranges today. The actual shooty part was nice enough I suppose, but the best was wandering the line. You meet the most interesting people at rifle ranges. I've always loved the folks in the American "gun culture".. I passed through it sort of tangentially, in the "I guess I better learn how these things work since they're all over the place" way, and just fell in love with the people. There's just something in the confluence of historical literacy, technical aptitude/fascination, and freedom nuttiness that makes it just quintessentially care-free charming American. Great folks.

So anyhow.. the cowboy folks were one end.. they're prolly the most fun of all I think. It's like being surrounded by a whole clan of your favorite grampa all at once. But I didn't get a chance to talk with them much. More towards the middle was a curious new sight - a whole cadre of people in the new army uniform practicing with pistols.

"That's odd," I think ... "why would Army be on a civilian range?" Not wanting to interrupt them, I ask a nearby gentleman, who somewhat scornfully refers to them as "roadbumps."

"hunh?"

As it turns out, they were State Guard... a sort of Alaskan state militia, more "citizen" than "solidier" than either the NG or Reserve folks.. hence my informant's (career military) disdain.

Eventually, I get a chance to chat with one of 'em myself. Truth be told, they reminded me strongly of the CAP here or the Search and Rescue folks down Idaho way - a fairly loose volunteer organization, more or less an auxiliary to more professional organizations. Historically, something of an anachronism, left over from the full mobilization days of WWII - or the State Militias that predated the vast military we have now.

Interesting folks.

And Alaska has a militia. Hunh, cool. Good to know. :)

Birchwood from the air. Airstrip right next to a rifle range.
Someone's idea of heaven, I'm sure. :)

Eternal desires.

I've been on one of those "let's discover" tears recently, this time in the opposite direction from our friends Livy and Herodotus.... trying to get a layman's grasp on nanotech and bio-engineering. Something my boss mentioned got me curious, and it's been a week's worth of skimming academic papers, watching "for the plebs" documentaries and intro lectures from MIT and Yale open courseware (what a Godsend!) and the occasional forum here and there.

Amazing stuff on the horizon. How much of it goes the way of those lunar bases and space stations* we were dreaming of in the 60's is yet to be seen, but the film from labs of stuff they're doing now already looks like science fiction - near miraculous.

Wow.

The big shocker though was seeing how many people were talking about indefinitely deferring death, at least via aging. I've been so at home with the death/rebirth cycle in my pagan soul that seeing aging attacked on a disease model was curious. And yet...it makes sense, I guess. Why not try? I confess though, more than once I couldn't help but be bemused at how Christian in worldview a good many of the stolid materialists on one board or another were with the "death is an enemy to be defeated" stance.**

Then the host of more immediate things on offer, from lab-grown replacement windpipes "breathing" in jar to MAVs flying around like literal killer bees.

Whatever happens, our world now will someday soon seem as distant and strange as the horse-drawn carts grampa grew up seeing. Interesting times.











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* I can't be the only one that thinks the Space Race dying down right about the time we got good ICBM and targeting technology out of the deal is a cooincidence. Or who puts a good deal of the "we could be on the moon now" blame at the feet of the Great Society. Ugh.

** Like any internet community though, a few seemed intent on proving over again the old adage that those who most want any power are those least to be trusted with it. Yikes.
The more things change...

Dang, thanks Oleg.

Anyone ever tell you you've got a whole lot of friends??

wow. um... hi y'all. :)

Sunday drive, Alaska Style

Thanks to Miss D and her flyin' buddy, this last Sunday was the AWESOMEST in ages! They invited me out for a trip down to Seward for some fish'n'chips. Now lest you think this was an ordinary Sunday afternoon out, let me assure you they do things different up here.

First, to the airfield. Upon arrival, we see a friend of FB come zooming in for a landing in one of the local CAF warbirds. "A German flying an American plane (built in Canada) inside Alaska." Tee!


After introductions (and ooing and ahing over the lovely creature) we were off ourselves.

Real Alaskans like to say "Anchorage....only 30 minutes from Alaska."

No joke, the sights were breathtaking. As gorgeous as Alaska is from the ground, it's absolutely breathtaking from the air. (And speaking of - if you ever come up on a visit, spend the extra for a flightseeing trip. If you're paying so much to get here, you're cheating yourself not to see these peaks from the topside)



And speaking of coming up for a visit, as it turned out we weren't the only ones that thought a stop in Seward would be fun - a cruise ship full of whalewatchers was sitting at dock as we arrived:
Once on the ground, a wonderfully nice gentleman gave us a lift into town. Dinner was awesome, of course. After, we walked the docks a bit. One of these days I'm going to have to see if I can sweet talk my way into a sailing outing for a day - it looks awesome fun!

Best part though was this cute little guy. He'd swim out into the harbor to grab a small shellfish, then swim back in right near the docks to chill out on his back for the noms.

Excuse me... do you have any Grey Poupon?

Some meandering on our walk back took us by a whole family of bunnies hanging out in town.


Time to get home though. Back to the skies. Even got to steer a bit once we were airborne - awesome. :)

Fly? Yes! Land? No...

But by the by - there's still some of Mt. Redoubt's calling card one range back from Anchorage. Ol' Mother Earth can be a mite messy herself sometimes -



Gosh that was fun. Thank you so much for the invite y'all, that was awesome!!

Book Report

So after finally replacing my (other) busted little audio player* I finished up the last of the Durant's Lessons of History yesterday. It's by necessity very "broad strokes" oriented - they talk general themes most of the time, with examples picked out here and there.**

The big issues of the late 60's are here... war and racism, religion and culture. It's not limited to the period though - then-current events are mentioned only in passing. Almost all of the work is much more universal in scope - or at least "history of Western Civ" in scope anyhow. (Side note - the Classics reading is definitely paying off. Being able to at least follow his conversation when he throws off a half dozen Greek and Roman names to illustrate a point is extremely useful - though humbling to realize it was once common knowledge his reader would be expected to know. )


Takeaways from the latter part of the book -

1. Mrs. Durant is a delight. Roughly paraphrased, in regards to her husband's changing views over time - "If old men had their way, they'd undo everything they had the courage to do when they were young and virile."

2. Religion (as opposed to faith) is discussed at length, and strictly in pragmatic (as opposed to theological) terms. Anyone familiar with the Adams quote "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other" knows the gist of his argument already.

The argument boils down to - Mankind needs control over our human vices. This will come from religion that entreats, cajoles, and harangues, or it will come from a State that compels. But it must come from somewhere.

Noticeably absent in the argument is the question of the truth of any given faith. The good professor gives the impression he'd be (almost) as content with the temples of Jupiter and Artemis as with the confessional and cross, provided those pragmatic concerns were met. I say "almost" though, as when asked to name a favorite figure from history, he answers quickly, without hesitation - Christ. Mrs. Durant is a bit more cagey on the point.

3. There's a definite post-Marxian vein running through his work, with the understanding of history as "the story of Who Has Stuff and How They Got It." His long-view look at our past sees us as alternating between wealth-creation and wealth-looting phases - and to the disgust of both democrats and libertarians no doubt, posits both as necessary over the long haul. Essentially, he reflects the New Deal ideology that "FDR stopped a communist revolution by instituting a minimal (later much expanded) welfare state." (This book itself came on the heels of LBJ's Great Society, which Durant posited as necessary).

Absent from the discussion is the stultifying effect of a welfare state on the intended beneficiaries - which is odd really, he could hardly have been unaware of it even then. I'd love to hear his arguments now, two generations later.

4. The same "a global superstate is going to be eventually necessary" is alluded to here and there, but never argued in detail. Obviously I disagree there, but what strikes me most of all is how much a product of the times the argument is.

I mean, if my lifetime experience had seen two World Wars devastate Europe, and spent the twilight of my life in the height of the Cold War... I could definitely see how I could come to much the same conclusion. Expand "the tribe" to include the world, and such risks are lessened. (Professor Durant is of course prescient enough to know it wouldn't come without warfare, and "civil wars" and revolutions would surely follow over time.)

Living instead in a time when the cost of those World Wars is for the most part confined to history books and blood curdling Tom Hanks movies, while the weight of Federal dictates grows ever heavier - I come to the opposite conclusion. That is, that devolution of power holds more hope for future happiness - despite the risks of losing the benefits the previous Old Guard gave us.


So.. those are the broad themes. A summary of a summary, in fact. What I can't communicate is just how much a delight hearing the conversation between the Durants is. I've had the very good fortune to listen to similar conversations on the porch once upon a time - but I can't help but wish I'd have had the chance to share a seat at the Durant kitchen table once or twice.

Audio version highly recommended.


PS - The last chapter "what does this mean we should do" though? ... one more reason academics need to be kept away from the levers of power at all costs. Whew.













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*Have I mentioned yet how much I hate buying electronics?

** A dangerous practice at times, but still useful provided one is careful to look for counter-evidence I think.

Well that's a mite ironical...

... that Plato is himself the Platonic Ideal of the Ivory Tower intellectual.

Oh, Republic book 5 was fun today. Here, let's share:


"Dude. I have this great idea for our perfect society."

"Yeah?"

"You know those tough guys and gals I was talking about? The ones who are going to be doing all the fighting and dying for us?"

"Oh yeah, them. What about them?"

"Let's make sure they can't own anything or marry. Or know their own children. Just have 'em all own each other in common. Oh, and we'll kill any kid they have if we don't like how they're breeding, got to watch the stock you know."

"...umm...."

"And they take their kids to battle with them. On the good horses though, in back."

"Dude..... genius!"


Yup. the whole of book five is pretty much like that. Socrates throws out some dictatorial "well we just make everyone do such-and-such" to be answered with a sycophantic "Brilliant!" no matter how absurd the suggestion.

(speaking of.... give all the weapons and armor to a hereditary class you treat like herd animals? While stomping on quite possibly the strongest human desires they have at every turn? And when you send them out to protect your sorry butt for you with their own kids in the back line.. you expect them to actually stay loyal to your sorry state for why again?)

After that he goes into what a shame it is no one listens to the True Thinkers and how much better it would be if we did.


Aint you glad that never happens today? ;)