A massive rare 'superstorm' is currently
bearing down on Alaska, with hurricane force winds (100+mph gusts), blizzard, sea-surge flooding. "This is going to be one of the worst storms on record over the Bering Sea". The storm passed through an area of unusually high sea surface temperatures. "This may
help explain why the storm is turning from an ordinary Bering Sea disturbance into a ‘superstorm’."
[more inside]
posted by stbalbach
on Nov 9, 2011 -
69 comments
"
Mother Jones [and, later, other media outlets] requested [Sarah] Palin's
gubernatorial emails during the 2008 election. Almost three years later, the wait is over. ... Today, at [1:00 pm ET] in Juneau, the state of Alaska is scheduled to release 24,199 pages of emails Sarah Palin sent and received during her half-term as governor of the Last Frontier. State workers will distribute six-box sets and hand trucks (which must be returned) to representatives of
a dozen or so media outfits" "Volunteers from the League of Women Voters and the Retired Public Employees of Alaska will be at Juneau's Centennial Hall convention center ... look[ing] for
any significant or interesting emails, stick a post-it note on the page, and pass them to journalists, who also will be reading through the 24,000 pages. Exact copies of the best of those emails will be posted online immediately. ... In the same room ... a second set of the documents will be scanned for msnbc.com by Crivella West, an analytics and investigative-research company from Pittsburgh, returning the records to their original electronic form, allowing anyone anywhere to join in the crowdsourcing. That free, public, searchable archive will go online, sometime later on Friday, at
http://palinemail.msnbc.msn.com." "The
Washington Post is looking for '100 organized and diligent readers' to work with reporters to 'analyze, contextualize, and research the emails.'
The New York Times is employing a similar system.'"
* [more inside]
posted by ericb
on Jun 10, 2011 -
158 comments
As governor, Palin demonstrated many of the qualities we expect in our best leaders. She set aside private concerns for the greater good, forgoing a focus on social issues to confront the great problem plaguing Alaska, its corrupt oil-and-gas politics. She did this in a way that seems wildly out of character today—by cooperating with Democrats and moderate Republicans to raise taxes on Big Business. And she succeeded to a remarkable extent in settling, at least for a time, what had seemed insoluble problems, in the process putting Alaska on a trajectory to financial well-being. Since 2008, Sarah Palin has influenced her party, and the tenor of its politics, perhaps more than any other Republican, but in a way that is almost the antithesis of what she did in Alaska. Had she stayed true to her record, she might have pointed her party in a very different direction.
posted by -->NMN.80.418
on May 14, 2011 -
79 comments
Alone In The Wilderness "Documentary tells the story of Dick Proenneke who, in the late 1960s, built his own cabin in the wilderness at the base of the Aleutian Peninsula, in what is now Lake Clark National Park. Using color footage he shot himself, Proenneke traces how he came to this remote area, selected a homestead site and built his log cabin completely by himself. The documentary covers his first year in-country, showing his day-to-day activities and the passing of the seasons as he sought to scratch out a living alone in the wilderness." (Color, 57mins)
posted by puny human
on May 2, 2011 -
62 comments
Five Alaskans have been
arrested and
charged with plotting to kill judges and State Troopers. At the time of their arrests, they had
obtained illegal guns, grenades, and silencers.
Schaefer Cox, the leader of the group, identifies himself with the
Sovereign Citizen Movement and is a member of the Alaska Citizens Militia. The militia—one of
hundreds of active “Patriot” Groups in the United States—maintains a
website with pictures of bears, videos, and a list of Acts of War, which include “mandatory medical anything” and “involuntary involvement in anything.”
[more inside]
posted by charmcityblues
on Mar 24, 2011 -
90 comments
"I figured I'd explore for a bit and before I knew it I was 50 yards within a huge cave gazing at the most beautiful, otherworldly sight I had ever laid eyes on," he tells us. "It was like stepping into Superman's lair and every changing shade of blue lured me deeper and deeper."
Inside Glacier Caves. [more inside]
posted by Rinku
on Mar 9, 2011 -
20 comments
Vanity Fair recently published "
It Came From Wasilla", Todd Purdum's lengthy profile piece about Sarah Palin, her involvement with and the inside workings of the McCain campaign, and her political future.
[more inside]
posted by Weebot
on Jun 30, 2009 -
232 comments
Prominent blogger
Andrew Sullivan develops an unhealthy obsession over the (lack of) details surrounding the birth of Sarah Palin's youngest child.
Sullivan really, really won't let it go. Persistent rumors lead the editor of the Alaska Daily News to, "finally decide, after watching this go on unabated for months, to let a reporter try to do a story about the 'conspiracy theory that would not die' and, possibly, report the facts of Trig's birth thoroughly enough to kill the nonsense once and for all." Palin releases
press release slamming the paper. Editor of paper
publishes email from Palin's office along with his response.
Palin complains about "bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers who lie," says episode is, "more indication of continued problems in the world of journalism." She also
thinks Katie Couric is bad at journalism, not the center of everybody's universe, and is exploiting Palin. Mike Huckabee disagrees, says Couric was
"extraordinarily gentle" with Palin. Political pundits and journalists are left scratching their heads - is she crazy?
Or a crazy genius? 2012 is just
around the corner.
posted by billysumday
on Jan 13, 2009 -
188 comments
Legislative panel concludes that Palin abused the power of her office. A Republican-dominated Alaska State Legislative panel voted unanimously this evening to release to the public the results of the investigation into Governor Sarah Palin's dismissal of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.
(Full report PDF here) Among four key points released in the report,
the most significant "concludes that Palin violated the state's executive branch ethics act, which says that 'each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.'"
posted by XQUZYPHYR
on Oct 10, 2008 -
477 comments
The 'Dirty Thirties' saw farmers hit with the double-whammy of the Great Depression and the ecological disaster of the
Dust bowl years.
"In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt offered 203 families from the hardest-hit areas of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan the chance to start fresh in a new land,
in a fertile Alaskan valley with the melodic name Matanuska."
"It was heady, fine-sounding stuff on paper. Picked from relief rolls in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, the prospective colonists knew their Promised Land was a wilderness, but the Government was going to turn the wilderness overnight into an Eden with running water, radios, a cinema. It was going to set each family up on fine 40-acre farms with every necessity, many a luxury, 30 years to pay." It didn't quite work out as well as they'd hoped.thirties' saw many farmers in the United States
[more inside]
posted by merelyglib
on Sep 10, 2008 -
33 comments
Enemy of the State. Wolves in Alaska are gunned down from the air for cash bounties, their orphaned pups often discovered by agency biologists in the field and
killed. Alaskans soon vote on
proposition 2 to stop the controversial slaughter that serves the interests of large game hunters.
posted by Brian B.
on Aug 29, 2008 -
30 comments
All across Alaska, radio operators tore their earphones from their heads, swore under their breath, and ran out to find help. The telegram in their hands read: "AN EPIDEMIC OF
DIPHTHERIA IS ALMOST INEVITABLE HERE STOP I AM IN URGENT NEED OF ONE MILLION UNITS OF DIPHTHERIA ANTITOXIN STOP MAIL IS ONLY FORM OF TRANSPORTATION STOP I HAVE MADE APPLICATION TO COMMISSIONER OF HEALTH OF THE TERRITORIES FOR ANTITOXIN ALREADY STOP THERE ARE ABOUT 3000¢WHITE NATIVES IN THE DISTRICT".
[more inside]
posted by Cobalt
on Aug 10, 2008 -
34 comments
62 year old emergency physician John Hall and his wife Jane took off on a
Bike Ride Around America to promote cancer awareness. They started on
April Fool's Day, and completed their 12,000 mile journey around the perimeter of the country just
today. Along the way they encountered hundreds of towns and thousands of
friendly people, and a few
not so nice. All in all, a pretty amazing accomplishment in my book.
posted by netbros
on Jul 31, 2008 -
21 comments
Dispatches from Polar Scientists -- A compilation of blogs "in celebration of the International Polar Year (2007-08), [giving] you an up-close-and-personal look at research in extreme environments through the thoughts and experiences of the scientists working there. We’ll post their photos, videos, and blogs on this site."
posted by fourcheesemac
on Jul 16, 2008 -
10 comments
A few years ago when I was visiting Alaska, one of the more interesting portions of the trip was the 45-minute drive from Anchorage to Girdwood along the
Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet. This is one of the world's rare bodies of water that features
bore tides, an amazing scene. The highway is one of only 15 roads in the United States that have been designated an "All-American Road." What about some of the world's greatest highways?
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Apr 17, 2008 -
17 comments
