Oh man, have I been lazy

So the last three days have been pretty much spent doing nothing. Watched some DVD's, made it to the grocery store, played Carcassonne with Kate. We had a wonderful Christmas morning and day and have finally had some good relaxation time.

I hope everyone else had a wonderful and relaxing time as well as we gear up for New Years. Fireworks and Thai food here! Oh yeah, we can once again see the Sun from our window!

Fox News is Blatently Irresponsible, Racist

I came across this little article today on Fox News:

'Anchor Baby' Constitutional Amendment to Face Scrutiny in Congress

It's a little piece from the Associated Press that strangely, does not go under the same title. In fact every other publication that used this article will be found with the title:

In Congress, A Harder Line On Illegal Immigrants (This link is to NPR, but you can just perform a google search on either title and see how many pop up.)

My main beef is that Fox News, under the guise of being 'fair and balanced' finds it acceptable to change an article title (that they did not write) to use more inflammatory language that suits it's own agenda. Well, maybe more angering is the use of the term 'anchor baby', which is pretty derogatory in it's own right, to describe what is the 14th amendment of the Constitution ratified in 1868. This amendment defines citizenship and personally I would rather not have Republican's rooting around and changing things in it.

It's additionally amusing because the claim is that the 'anchor baby' makes it so the parents can stay in the country. This is wrong. The child must be 21 years old before the parents can apply for a visa. Enforcement of the current laws in place is really all that is needed; we don't need to go changing the Constitution that Republicans, and Fox News claim is under attack by democrats (If you click this link, also take a look at the URL. It is pretty funny all on its own). Who does the Constitution need protection from?

Happy Solstice!

The Tanana Valley and Denali just after the Solstice sunset. This was our shortest day of the year at 3 hours 41 minutes 22 seconds. Today will be 9 seconds longer, and in a about three weeks we'll be gaining 6 minutes a day.

My schoolwork is finally all submitted and the semester is officially over. Kate's parents have been here for about a week and are heading home tonight. It's been a busy week. We had a lot of good food and spent a lot of time driving around the interior looking for pretty vistas and wildlife. Unfortunately, we saw no moose. How, how can anyone be in Alaska for a week and not see a moose? Kate and I saw three, two after dropping her parents off, and one going to pick them up. Ridiculous.

We did see a wolf on the Salcha river that had a fresh kill. It was really cool. Sorry, no pictures. We also saw a lot of ice; first at Christmas on Ice in North Pole and then in the year-round ice museum at Chena Hot Springs.

Dave, Sandi and Kate in North Pole at the Christmas on Ice carving extravaganza. It was a little uncomfortable it was so cold. But, we had fun anyway.

Christmas shopping happened all over the city. Dave and I drove up to Murphy Dome, where it was 7 degrees F above zero (it hasn't been above zero in Fairbanks in 18 days), but the wind was blowing very hard, so it wasn't really noticeable.

Alaska Range viewed from Murphy Dome. All pictures are in flickr.

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, It's December

Since I won't be posting much again until the semester is over, I thought it would be nice to post some photos daily on my flickr account. Just random stuff that goes on and that we see while out and about.

Go to December and Friends Here!



Otis will snuggle! No amount of Sudoku can stop the cat.


We finally got around to decorating the tree today. Looks good.

New Day

World daylight map from die.net


So, even though it's pretty dark in Fairbanks right now (sunrise to sunset for December 7th: 4h 12m 30s), because of the shallow angle that the Sun sets we get a lot of twilight. And not the sparkly vampire kind, the good kind where you get pretty views like this one:



This was taken at 9:27 am, a little over 1 hour before sunrise. Color actually started to appear and the mountains took shape at about 8:30 am.

And no, I won't stop taking pictures of the same thing until I have a full years worth of them.

Venus has been really bright, and is just a little out of the frame here. Soon it will be a little closer to the horizon near sunrise and hopefully will make for some good photos if the weather stays clear.

Next Week and a Half

Just so you know, I probably won't post much in the next couple of weeks or so. Next week is finals week, and there's a lot of work and grading to wrap up. Check back soon though!

Thanks,
Lee

A little more on climate change

Here is a fantastic presentation by John Abraham on the fallacies of Christopher Monckton's attempts at debunking global warming with intent on changing public policy on climate change research. Monckton is not a scientist, but he still gets to take on the role of a climate change "policy-maker" in front of congress with the same misconstrued data that Abraham debunks. Abraham's argument is very well presented and very well cited. It's a little long (73 min. 36 sec.), but I highly encourage everyone to sit down some time and listen to it here:

John Abraham presentation: Who is Chris Monckton?

Abraham reviews a large chunk of Monckton's statements, extensively criticizes his lack of attributions (which I would take a step further and call plagiarism), and asks where the money comes from that supports climate change denialists (hint: it's oil money).

After Abraham's posting, Monckton demanded that it be taken down, that Abraham publicly apologize, and that he and his University pay $110,000 to a charity of his choice. You can read the full response at the SPPI site here. It's wack.

Fox news pretty frequently put's Monckton on a pedestal, which creates a scary, resonant phenomena that spreads (almost maliciously) misuse and abuse of science and public policy.

I just wanted to share this morning's sunrise with everyone

Happy December!