Alaskan Photoblog

Anchorage - Evening Light

2012-02-19T13:10:00.002-09:00

2012-02-04T19:34:00.000-09:00

2012-01-22T09:25:00.001-09:00

2012-01-07T18:54:00.000-09:00

Here are some pretty amazing color photos from the turn of the here. These were from Albert Khan.

"In 1909, the millionaire French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn embarked on a project to create a color photographic record of the world and its people...
Using his huge fortune, Mr Kahn sent a group of photographers to more than fifty countries around the world.
The intrepid photographers took the earliest known color photographs in countries such as the United States, Brazil, Vietnam, Mongolia, Norway and Benin.
With the First World War and the beginnings of twentieth century globalization, it was a time of great change with old cultures on the brink of being changed forever."

2012-01-06T13:35:00.000-09:00

Something for your consideration. Remember this the next time some leftist twit talks about civility in politics.

2012-01-02T14:13:00.000-09:00

Happy 2012!

2012-01-01T17:56:00.000-09:00

Here's hoping that 2012 is a better year for everyone than this past year.

Approaching Cantwell

2011-12-27T20:46:00.000-09:00

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T15:09:00.001-09:00

For your Cristmas consideration. I found this article over at Instapundit. It's not very Christmasy, but something to think about none the less. Here's the link.As he said in his intro to this article, you wonder how those who railed about the evil of places like Guantanamo and Abu Graib can remain silent about this? But after eight years of rabid Bush derangement syndrome, increasingly corrupted elections, three years of the most cynical and corrupt administration in this country's history, and that's going a stretch, I don't wonder anymore. I am posting the entire article here for you to read. Merry Christmas.

The Xinjiang ProcedureBeijing’s ‘New Frontier’ is ground zero for the organ harvesting of political prisoners.
Ethan Gutmann
December 5, 2011, Vol. 17, No. 12

To figure out what is taking place today in a closed society such as northwest China, sometimes you have to go back a decade, sometimes more. One clue might be found on a hilltop near southern Guangzhou, on a partly cloudy autumn day in 1991. A small medical team and a young doctor starting a practice in internal medicine had driven up from Sun Yat-sen Medical University in a van modified for surgery. Pulling in on bulldozed earth, they found a small fleet of similar vehicles—clean, white, with smoked glass windows and prominent red crosses on the side. The police had ordered the medical team to stay inside for their safety. Indeed, the view from the side window of lines of ditches—some filled in, others freshly dug—suggested that the hilltop had served as a killing ground for years. Thirty-six scheduled executions would translate into 72 kidneys and corneas divided among the regional hospitals. Every van contained surgeons who could work fast: 15-30 minutes to extract. Drive back to the hospital. Transplant within six hours. Nothing fancy or experimental; execution would probably ruin the heart. With the acceleration of Chinese medical expertise over the last decade, organs once considered scraps no longer went to waste. It wasn’t public knowledge exactly, but Chinese medical schools taught that many otherwise wicked criminals volunteered their organs as a final penance. Right after the first shots the van door was thrust open and two men with white surgical coats thrown over their uniforms carried a body in, the head and feet still twitching slightly. The young doctor noted that the wound was on the right side of the chest as he had expected. When body #3 was laid down, he went to work. Male, 40-ish, Han Chinese. While the other retail organs in the van were slated for the profitable foreigner market, the doctor had seen the paperwork indicating this kidney was tissue-matched for transplant into a 50-year-old Chinese man. Without the transplant, that man would die. With it, the same man would rise miraculously from his hospital bed and go on to have a normal life for 25 years or so. By 2016, given all the anti-tissue-rejection drug advances in China, they could theoretically replace the liver, lungs, or heart—maybe buy that man another 10 to 15 years. Body #3 had no special characteristics save an angry purple line on the neck. The doctor recognized the forensics. Sometimes the police would twist a wire around a prisoner’s throat to prevent him from speaking up in court. The doctor thought it through methodically. Maybe the police didn’t want this prisoner to talk because he had been a deranged killer, a thug, or mentally unstable. After all, the Chinese penal system was a daily sausage grinder, executing hardcore criminals on a massive scale. Yes, the young doctor knew the harvesting was wrong. Whatever crime had been committed, it would be nice if the prisoner’s body were allowed to rest forever. Yet was his surgical task that different from an obstetrician’s? Harvesting was rebirth, harvesting was life, as revolutionary an advance as antibiotics or steroids. Or maybe, he thought, they didn’t want this man to talk because he was a political prisoner.Nineteen years later, in a secure European location, the doctor laid out the puzzle. He asked that I keep his identity a secret. Chinese medical authorities admit that the lion’s share of transplant organs originate with executions, but no mainland Chinese doctors, even in exile, will normally speak of performing such surgery. To do so would remind international medical authorities of an issue they would rather avoid—not China’s soaring execution rate or the exploitation of criminal organs, but rather the systematic elimination of China’s religious and political prisoners. Yet even if this doctor feared consequences to his family and his career, he did not fear embarrassing China, for he was born into an indigenous minority group, the Uighurs. Every Uighur witness I approached over the course of two years—police, medical, and security personnel scattered across two continents—related compartmentalized fragments of information to me, often through halting translation. They acknowledged the risk to their careers, their families, and, in several cases, their lives. Their testimony reveals not just a procedure evolving to meet the lucrative medical demand for living organs, but the genesis of a wider atrocity.Behind closed doors, the Uighurs call their vast region in China’s northwest corner (bordering on India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia) East Turkestan. The Uighurs are ethnically Turkic, not East Asian. They are Muslims with a smattering of Christians, and their language is more readily understood in Tashkent than in Beijing. By contrast, Beijing’s name for the so-called Autonomous Region, Xinjiang, literally translates as “new frontier.” When Mao invaded in 1949, Han Chinese constituted only 7 percent of the regional population. Following the flood of Communist party administrators, soldiers, shopkeepers, and construction corps, Han Chinese now constitute the majority. The party calculates that Xinjiang will be its top oil and natural gas production center by the end of this century. To protect this investment, Beijing traditionally depicted all Uighur nationalists—violent rebels and non-violent activists alike—as CIA proxies. Shortly after 9/11, that conspiracy theory was tossed down the memory hole. Suddenly China was, and always has been, at war with al Qaeda-led Uighur terrorists. No matter how transparently opportunistic the switch, the American intelligence community saw an opening for Chinese cooperation in the war on terror, and signaled their acquiescence by allowing Chinese state security personnel into Guantánamo to interrogate Uighur detainees. While it is difficult to know the strength of the claims of the detainees’ actual connections to al Qaeda, the basic facts are these: During the 1990s, when the Chinese drove the Uighur rebel training camps from neighboring countries such as Kazakhstan and Pakistan, some Uighurs fled to Afghanistan where a portion became Taliban soldiers. And yet, if the Chinese government claims that the Uighurs constitute their own Islamic fundamentalist problem, the fact is that I’ve never met a Uighur woman who won’t shake hands or a man who won’t have a drink with me. Nor does my Jewish-sounding name appear to make anyone flinch. In one of those vino veritas sessions, I asked a local Uighur leader if he was able to get any sort of assistance from groups such as the Islamic Human Rights Commission (where, as I found during a brief visit to their London offices, veiled women flinch from an extended male hand, drinks are forbidden, and my Jewish surname is a very big deal indeed). “Useless!” he snorted, returning to the vodka bottle. So if Washington’s goal is to promote a reformed China, then taking Beijing’s word for who is a terrorist is to play into the party’s hands. Xinjiang has long served as the party’s illicit laboratory: from the atmospheric nuclear testing in Lop Nur in the mid-sixties (resulting in a significant rise in cancers in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital) to the more recent creation in the Tarim Desert of what could well be the world’s largest labor camp, estimated to hold 50,000 Uighurs, hardcore criminals, and practitioners of Falun Gong. And when it comes to the first organ harvesting of political prisoners, Xinjiang was ground zero. In 1989, not long after Nijat Abdureyimu turned 20, he graduated from Xinjiang Police School and was assigned to a special police force, Regiment No. 1 of the Urumqi Public Security Bureau. As one of the first Uighurs in a Chinese unit that specialized in “social security”—essentially squelching threats to the party—Nijat was employed as the good cop in Uighur interrogations, particularly the high-profile cases. I first met Nijat—thin, depressed, and watchful—in a crowded refugee camp on the outskirts of Rome.Nijat explained to me that he was well aware that his Chinese colleagues kept him under constant surveillance. But Nijat presented the image they liked: the little brother with the guileless smile. By 1994 he had penetrated all of the government’s secret bastions: the detention center, its interrogation rooms, and the killing grounds. Along the way, he had witnessed his fair share of torture, executions, even a rape. So his curiosity was in the nature of professional interest when he questioned one of the Chinese cops who came back from an execution shaking his head. According to his colleague, it had been a normal procedure—the unwanted bodies kicked into a trench, the useful corpses hoisted into the harvesting vans, but then he heard something coming from a van, like a man screaming. “Like someone was still alive?” Nijat remembers asking. “What kind of screams?”“Like from hell.”Nijat shrugged. The regiment had more than enough sloppiness to go around. A few months later, three death row prisoners were being transported from detention to execution. Nijat had become friendly with one in particular, a very young man. As Nijat walked alongside, the young man turned to Nijat with eyes like saucers: “Why did you inject me?”Nijat hadn’t injected him; the medical director had. But the director and some legal officials were watching the exchange, so Nijat lied smoothly: “It’s so you won’t feel much pain when they shoot you.” The young man smiled faintly, and Nijat, sensing that he would never quite forget that look, waited until the execution was over to ask the medical director: “Why did you inject him?”“Nijat, if you can transfer to some other section, then go as soon as possible.”“What do you mean? Doctor, exactly what kind of medicine did you inject him with?”“Nijat, do you have any beliefs?”“Yes. Do you?”“It was an anticoagulant, Nijat. And maybe we are all going to hell.”I first met Enver Tohti—a soft-spoken, husky, Buddha of a man—through the informal Uighur network of London. I confess that my first impression was that he was just another emigré living in public housing. But Enver had a secret.His story began on a Tuesday in June 1995, when he was a general surgeon in an Urumqi hospital. Enver recalled an unusual conversation with his immediate superior, the chief surgeon: “Enver, we are going to do something exciting. Have you ever done an operation in the field?”“Not really. What do you want me to do?”“Get a mobile team together and request an ambulance. Have everyone out front at nine tomorrow.”On a cloudless Wednesday morning, Enver led two assistants and an anaesthesiologist into an ambulance and followed the chief surgeon’s car out of Urumqi going west. The ambulance had a picnic atmosphere until they realized they were entering the Western Mountain police district, which specialized in executing political dissidents. On a dirt road by a steep hill the chief surgeon pulled off, and came back to talk to Enver: “When you hear a gunshot, drive around the hill.”“Can you tell us why we are here?”“Enver, if you don’t want to know, don’t ask.”“I want to know.”“No. You don’t want to know.” The chief surgeon gave him a quick, hard look as he returned to the car. Enver saw that beyond the hill there appeared to be some sort of armed police facility. People were milling about—civilians. Enver half-satirically suggested to the team that perhaps they were family members waiting to collect the body and pay for the bullet, and the team responded with increasingly sick jokes to break the tension. Then they heard a gunshot, possibly a volley, and drove around to the execution field.Focusing on not making any sudden moves as he followed the chief surgeon’s car, Enver never really did get a good look. He briefly registered that there were 10, maybe 20 bodies lying at the base of the hill, but the armed police saw the ambulance and waved him over.“This one. It’s this one.”Sprawled on the blood-soaked ground was a man, around 30, dressed in navy blue overalls. All convicts were shaved, but this one had long hair.“That’s him. We’ll operate on him.”“Why are we operating?” Enver protested, feeling for the artery in the man’s neck. “Come on. This man is dead.” Enver stiffened and corrected himself. “No. He’s not dead.” “Operate then. Remove the liver and the kidneys. Now! Quick! Be quick!”Following the chief surgeon’s directive, the team loaded the body into the ambulance. Enver felt himself going numb: Just cut the clothes off. Just strap the limbs to the table. Just open the body. He kept making attempts to follow normal procedure—sterilize, minimal exposure, sketch the cut. Enver glanced questioningly at the chief surgeon. “No anaesthesia,” said the chief surgeon. “No life support.”The anaesthesiologist just stood there, arms folded—like some sort of ignorant peasant, Enver thought. Enver barked at him. “Why don’t you do something?”“What exactly should I do, Enver? He’s already unconscious. If you cut, he’s not going to respond.”But there was a response. As Enver’s scalpel went in, the man’s chest heaved spasmodically and then curled back again. Enver, a little frantic now, turned to the chief surgeon. “How far in should I cut?”“You cut as wide and deep as possible. We are working against time.” Enver worked fast, not bothering with clamps, cutting with his right hand, moving muscle and soft tissue aside with his left, slowing down only to make sure he excised the kidneys and liver cleanly. Even as Enver stitched the man back up—not internally, there was no point to that anymore, just so the body might look presentable—he sensed the man was still alive. I am a killer, Enver screamed inwardly. He did not dare to look at the face again, just as he imagined a killer would avoid looking at his victim.The team drove back to Urumqi in silence. On Thursday, the chief surgeon confronted Enver: “So. Yesterday. Did anything happen? Yesterday was a usual, normal day. Yes?”Enver said yes, and it took years for him to understand that live organs had lower rejection rates in the new host, or that the bullet to the chest had—other than that first sickening lurch—acted like some sort of magical anaesthesia. He had done what he could; he had stitched the body back neatly for the family. And 15 years would elapse before Enver revealed what had happened that Wednesday.As for Nijat, it wasn’t until 1996 that he put it together. It happened just about midnight, well after the cell block lights were turned off. Nijat found himself hanging out in the detention compound’s administrative office with the medical director. Following a pause in the conversation, the director, in an odd voice, asked Nijat if he thought the place was haunted. “Maybe it feels a little weird at night,” Nijat answered. “Why do you think that?”“Because too many people have been killed here. And for all the wrong reasons.” Nijat finally understood. The anticoagulant. The expensive “execution meals” for the regiment following a trip to the killing ground. The plainclothes agents in the cells who persuaded the prisoners to sign statements donating their organs to the state. And now the medical director was confirming it all: Those statements were real. They just didn’t take account of the fact that the prisoners would still be alive when they were cut up.“Nijat, we really are going to hell.”Nijat nodded, pulled on his beer, and didn’t bother to smile.On February 2, 1997, Bahtiyar Shemshidin began wondering whether he was a policeman in name only. Two years before, the Chinese Public Security Bureau of the Western city of Ghulja recruited Bahtiyar for the drug enforcement division. It was a natural fit because Bahtiyar was tall, good-looking, and exuded effortless Uighur authority. Bahtiyar would ultimately make his way to Canada and freedom, but he had no trouble recalling his initial idealism; back then, Bahtiyar did not see himself as a Chinese collaborator but as an emergency responder. For several years, heroin addiction had been creeping through the neighborhoods of Ghulja, striking down young Uighurs like a medieval plague. Yet inside the force, Bahtiyar quickly grasped that the Chinese heroin cartel was quietly protected, if not encouraged, by the authorities. Even his recruitment was a bait-and-switch. Instead of sending him after drug dealers, his Chinese superiors ordered him to investigate the Meshrep—a traditional Muslim get-together promoting clean living, sports, and Uighur music and dance. If the Meshrep had flowered like a traditional herbal remedy against the opiate invader, the Chinese authorities read it as a disguised attack on the Chinese state. In early January 1997, on the eve of Ramadan, the entire Ghulja police force—Uighurs and Chinese alike—were suddenly ordered to surrender their guns “for inspection.” Now, almost a month later, the weapons were being released. But Bahtiyar’s gun was held back. Bahtiyar went to the Chinese bureaucrat who controlled supplies and asked after it. “Your gun has a problem,” Bahtiyar was told.“When will you fix the problem?”The bureaucrat shrugged, glanced at his list, and looked up at Bahtiyar with an unblinking stare that said: It is time for you to go. By the end of the day, Bahtiyar got it: Every Chinese officer had a gun. Every Uighur officer’s gun had a problem. Three days later, Bahtiyar understood why. On February 5, approximately 1,000 Uighurs gathered in the center of Ghulja. The day before, the Chinese authorities arrested (and, it was claimed, severely abused) six women, all Muslim teachers, all participants in the Meshrep. The young men came without their winter coats to show they were unarmed, but, planned or unplanned, the Chinese police fired on the demonstrators. Casualty counts of what is known as the Ghulja incident remain shaky. Bahtiyar recalls internal police estimates of 400 dead, but he didn’t see it; all Uighur policemen had been sent to the local jail “to interrogate prisoners” and were locked in the compound throughout the crisis. However, Bahtiyar did see Uighurs herded into the compound and thrown naked onto the snow—some bleeding, others with internal injuries. Ghulja’s main Uighur clinic was effectively shut down when a squad of Chinese special police arrested 10 of the doctors and destroyed the clinic’s ambulance. As the arrests mounted by late April, the jail became hopelessly overcrowded, and Uighur political prisoners were selected for daily executions. On April 24, Bahtiyar’s colleagues witnessed the killing of eight political prisoners; what struck them was the presence of doctors in “special vans for harvesting organs.”In Europe I spoke with a nurse who worked in a major Ghulja hospital following the incident. Nervously requesting that I provide no personal details, she told me that the hospitals were forbidden to treat Uighur protesters. A doctor who bandaged an arm received a 15-year sentence, while another got 20 years, and hospital staff were told, “If you treat someone, you will get the same result.” The separation between the Uighur and Chinese medical personnel deepened: Chinese doctors would stockpile prescriptions rather than allow Uighur medical staff a key to the pharmacy, while Uighur patients were receiving 50 percent of their usual doses. If a Uighur couple had a second child, even if the birth was legally sanctioned, Chinese maternity doctors, she observed, administered an injection (described as an antibiotic) to the infant. The nurse could not recall a single instance of the same injection given to a Chinese baby. Within three days the infant would turn blue and die. Chinese staffers offered a rote explanation to Uighur mothers: Your baby was too weak, your baby could not handle the drug. Shortly after the Ghulja incident, a young Uighur protester’s body returned home from a military hospital. Perhaps the fact that the abdomen was stitched up was just evidence of an autopsy, but it sparked another round of riots. After that, the corpses were wrapped, buried at gunpoint, and Chinese soldiers patrolled the cemeteries (one is not far from the current Urumqi airport). By June, the nurse was pulled into a new case: A young Uighur protester had been arrested and beaten severely. His family paid for his release, only to discover that their son had kidney damage. The family was told to visit a Chinese military hospital in Urumqi where the hospital staff laid it out: One kidney, 30,000 RMB (roughly $4,700). The kidney will be healthy, they were assured, because the transplant was to come from a 21-year-old Uighur male—the same profile as their son. The nurse learned that the “donor” was, in fact, a protester. In the early autumn of 1997, fresh out of a blood-work tour in rural Xinjiang, a young Uighur doctor—let’s call him Murat—was pursuing a promising medical career in a large Urumqi hospital. Two years later he was planning his escape to Europe, where I met him some years after. One day Murat’s instructor quietly informed him that five Chinese government officials—big guys, party members—had checked into the hospital with organ problems. Now he had a job for Murat: “Go to the Urumqi prison. The political wing, not the criminal side. Take blood samples. Small ones. Just to map out the different blood types. That’s all you have to do.” “What about tissue matching?”“Don’t worry about any of that, Murat. We’ll handle that later. Just map out the blood types.”Clutching the authorization, and accompanied by an assistant from the hospital, Murat, slight and bookish, found himself facing approximately 15 prisoners, mostly tough-guy Uighurs in their late twenties. As the first prisoner sat down and saw the needle, the pleading began. “You are a Uighur like me. Why are you going to hurt me?” “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just taking blood.”At the word “blood,” everything collapsed. The men howled and stampeded, the guards screaming and shoving them back into line. The prisoner shrieked that he was innocent. The Chinese guards grabbed his neck and squeezed it hard. “It’s just for your health,” Murat said evenly, suddenly aware the hospital functionary was probably watching to make sure that Murat wasn’t too sympathetic. “It’s just for your health,” Murat said again and again as he drew blood. When Murat returned to the hospital, he asked the instructor, “Were all those prisoners sentenced to death?”“That’s right, Murat, that’s right. Yes. Just don’t ask any more questions. They are bad people—enemies of the country.”But Murat kept asking questions, and over time, he learned the drill. Once they found a matching blood type, they would move to tissue matching. Then the political prisoner would get a bullet to the right side of the chest. Murat’s instructor would visit the execution site to match up blood samples. The officials would get their organs, rise from their beds, and check out. Six months later, around the first anniversary of Ghulja, five new officials checked in. The instructor told Murat to go back to the political wing for fresh blood. This time, Murat was told that harvesting political prisoners was normal. A growing export. High volume. The military hospitals are leading the way. By early 1999, Murat stopped hearing about harvesting political prisoners. Perhaps it was over, he thought.Yet the Xinjiang procedure spread. By the end of 1999, the Uighur crackdown would be eclipsed by Chinese security’s largest-scale action since Mao: the elimination of Falun Gong. By my estimate up to three million Falun Gong practitioners would pass through the Chinese corrections system. Approximately 65,000 would be harvested, hearts still beating, before the 2008 Olympics. An unspecified, significantly smaller, number of House Christians and Tibetans likely met the same fate. By Holocaust standards these are piddling numbers, so let’s be clear: China is not the land of the final solution. But it is the land of the expedient solution. Some will point to recent statements from the Chinese medical establishment admitting the obvious—China’s medical environment is not fully ethical—and see progress. Foreign investors suspect that eventually the Chinese might someday—or perhaps have already—abandon organ harvesting in favor of the much more lucrative pharmaceutical and clinical testing industries. The problem with these soothing narratives is that reports, some as recent as one year ago, suggest that the Chinese have not abandoned the Xinjiang procedure. In July 2009, Urumqi exploded in bloody street riots between Uighurs and Han Chinese. The authorities massed troops in the regional capital, kicked out the Western journalists, shut down the Internet, and, over the next six months, quietly, mostly at night, rounded up Uighur males by the thousands. According to information leaked by Uighurs held in captivity, some prisoners were given physical examinations aimed solely at assessing the health of their retail organs. The signals may be faint, but they are consistent, and the conclusion is inescapable: China, a state rapidly approaching superpower status, has not just committed human rights abuses—that’s old news—but has, for over a decade, perverted the most trusted area of human expertise into performing what is, in the legal parlance of human rights, targeted elimination of a specific group. Yet Nijat sits in refugee limbo in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, waiting for a country to offer him asylum. He confessed to me. He confessed to others. But in a world eager not to offend China, no state wants his confession. Enver made his way to an obscure seminar hosted by the House of Commons on Chinese human rights. When the MPs opened the floor to questions, Enver found himself standing up and speaking, for the first time, of killing a man. I took notes, but no British MP or their staffers could be bothered to take Enver’s number. The implications are clear enough. Nothing but self-determination for the Uighurs can suffice. The Uighurs, numbering 13 million, are few, but they are also desperate. They may fight. War may come. On that day, as diplomats across the globe call for dialogue with Beijing, may every nation look to its origins and its conscience. For my part, if my Jewish-sounding name tells me anything, it is this: The dead may never be fully avenged, but no people can accept being fatally exploited forever.Ethan Gutmann, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wishes to thank Jaya Gibson for research assistance and the Peder Wallenberg family for research support.

2011-12-16T04:31:00.001-09:00

Fridaynight, Fall Colors, and Football

2011-12-10T17:15:00.004-09:00

I saw this over at SDA and had to put it up here.

Autumn Along The Tracks

2011-12-04T14:04:00.002-09:00

2011-11-25T08:58:00.001-09:00

2011-11-18T06:20:00.003-09:00

Compare & Contrast

And now back to some semblance of normalcy,

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

Sometimes it's hard not to daydream

2011-11-13T15:57:00.002-09:00

H/T, Daphne at Jaded Haven

Misty

2011-11-07T07:26:00.002-09:00

A bad day on a bike is...

2011-10-30T08:27:00.001-08:00

better than a good day at the office.

2011-10-23T18:17:00.002-08:00

2011-10-16T07:39:00.001-08:00

Fall Color

2011-10-09T06:39:00.001-08:00

Autumn

2011-10-02T08:07:00.002-08:00

I took this yesterday, (10/01/2011) while on a bike ride along Turnagain Arm from Indian to Girdwood and back. The weather was not the best. Further down from this image it was raining and there was a stiff headwind out of the southeast. The ride became much better when I turned around to go back and had a raging tailwind. Regardless, as they say a bad day on a bike is better than a great day at work. Unfortunately, this might have been the last ride of the season, for the road bike anyway.

City Diner

2011-09-22T06:10:00.003-08:00

Above, a single exposure, below a three exposure HDR.

Evening Glow

2011-09-18T20:44:00.001-08:00

2011-09-02T21:10:00.002-08:00

Something for tonight, enjoy...

Ray: A Life Underwater from Danny Cooke on Vimeo.

2011-08-28T07:52:00.003-08:00

This is a scan of a negative, taken with my Minolta XG-1 during the spring breakup of the Kuskokwim River at Bethel in May of 83. I didn't write down and no longer recall what film I used. As you can see, this is from before the 'sea-wall' was built. The old sea-wall consisted of cars, machinery, etc. Whatever was big, heavy, and could (hopefully) stay in place as the ice scoured the riverbank.

Also, for something completely different. Go visit this site,Gigapixel Photography for some truly amazing panoramic photography. What's even more amazing is that the cost of the equipment to do this is under $500.00. I would have thought that it would have been in the thousands at least. Click on one of the panoramas, zoom in and look around. Astonishing.
Fair warning, have a fast internet connection.

Getting There First

2011-08-21T08:36:00.001-08:00

2011-08-15T07:02:00.001-08:00

Eveing's Golden Light

2011-08-12T17:34:00.002-08:00

And bonus, down at the end of the road, just to the left, a pot of gold!

End of season soccer tournament

2011-08-07T20:22:00.004-08:00

Summer's Peak

2011-07-31T09:16:00.004-08:00

I took this Saturday (7/30/11) on the 'Bird to Gird' bike trail. Summer is at its zenith. The fireweed is in full bloom and we are now beginning that slow glide into fall, my favorite season.

2011-07-26T21:16:00.001-08:00

Ptarmigan, summer plummage

2011-07-19T16:28:00.009-08:00

I've been on a classic rock & roll kick so...
Friday night's music this week is some live early Led Zepplin doing Communication Breakdown from Danish TV1. Worth a listen. It has a great view of a smoking Paige solo. You don't see anyone playing like this these days, unfortunately.

Also, from 1956, here's Johnny Burnette doing the Original 'Train Kept a Rollin'. Later made famous by the Yardbirds and even later by Aerosmith. None of the covers matches the original, but see for yourself.

Summer Days

2011-07-15T20:48:00.006-08:00

Taken during a short hike this afternoon.
It was too nice to stay at work. What can I say.

Some oldies for a Friday night.
They still hold up, in my opinion anyway.
Better than a lot of new stuff.

July 4th Parade

2011-07-08T05:08:00.004-08:00

I'm hoping that everyone had a good Independence Day!

Lifted from Daphne's site (Jaded Haven. THanks again...

The Raconteurs "Old Enough" Featuring Ricky Skaggs and Ashley Monroe from Miky Wolf on Vimeo.

The Bus Stopped Here

2011-07-01T06:56:00.005-08:00

Hand held HDR.
Here's some Fridaynight videos,

The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

Magnus from Meradi Omar on Vimeo.

2011-06-26T09:07:00.002-08:00

Summer!

2011-06-15T10:25:00.003-08:00

OK, not Alaska. Taken in south central Minnesota.

If you have a few minutes, watching Conan O'Brien's commencement address at Dartmouth is well worth your time. It's a great speech...

This too is worth a few minutes...

2011-06-10T06:59:00.001-08:00

2011-06-05T06:55:00.004-08:00

The Memorial Day weekend was gorgeous. My wife and I went and rode the Bird to Gird bicycle trail along Turnagain Arm. This image was taken near the Girdwood end.

And now for something completely different....

Weinergate! The song...

2011-06-03T07:03:00.001-08:00

Rockstar

2011-05-29T11:29:00.003-08:00

On this Memorial Day weekend,let us remember those who sacrificed all for their country and let's not forget that all threats are necessarily external.

2011-05-22T13:38:00.003-08:00

Playing around with Photoshop and textures.

Go here to see some truly incredible photos of the Nyiragongo Crater in the heart of the Great Lakes region of Africa. It's worth a few minutes of your time.

2011-05-11T08:07:00.001-08:00

2011-04-29T20:49:00.001-08:00

2011-04-22T06:44:00.001-08:00

2011-04-16T14:38:00.002-08:00

From a link I found, courtesy(Small Dead Animals), here are some amazing sports photos, enjoy...

2011-04-09T13:38:00.001-08:00

2011-04-02T16:05:00.002-08:00

Spring time

2011-03-26T21:08:00.005-08:00

Early spring evening...

This past week, the last movie star died. Elizabeth Taylor.
In remembrance, here's a photo from a time in her life when she wasn't just hot, but smoking hot. I recommend you watch "Who's afraid of Virginia Wolf?" and see how great acting looked. She and Richard Burton seem so real, you almost wonder if they were acting. RIP...
H/T to Small Dead animals on the photo.

2011-03-18T18:08:00.006-08:00

Friday night and here are two videos from an old favorite, Brian Eno.
The 1977 albumn 'Before & After Science'.
This predates MTV and the videos are a treat to watch. They remind me of Monty Python. Eno was, in my opinion, ahead of his time.

So crank up your speakers and enjoy...

First up, King's Lead Hat. My daughter (13) who's deeply into the Beatles said this was 'ok.'

Second, also from the same albumn, 'No One Receiving' I like a lot, my daughter, after listening told me we have very different taste in music.

Last up, a 1978 song from Pere Ubu, another great band.

2011-03-12T06:41:00.001-09:00

2011-03-02T06:32:00.002-09:00

And now for something completely different. An urban downhill mountain bike race in Valparaiso, Chile. Courtesy of Vimeo, via David Thompson & SDA.

VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.

Soon!

2011-02-27T13:19:00.002-09:00

Stairway to Parking

2011-02-12T05:40:00.001-09:00

The Windward Shore

2011-02-06T06:31:00.002-09:00

2011-01-23T18:46:00.001-09:00

2011-01-20T05:38:00.002-09:00

2011-01-12T21:17:00.002-09:00

Happy New Years!

2011-01-02T17:30:00.006-09:00

Here's hoping that 2011 is a better year, in all ways, than 2010 was.
This is an HDR 'View from the Porch.'Taken at sunset, new year's eve.
Hand held.

And of course, another edition of 'Separated at birth'

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-24T08:59:00.005-09:00

Here's hoping that everyone has a Merry Christmas.

We end the year with 'Big Sis' punishing a citizen speaking the truth and the FCC trying to reign in free speech by attempting to seize control of the internet.

To compound that, yesterday, I learned some very sad news indeed. Dennis the Peasant (see links below) will be signing off. His was a clear and bright voice in the political blogosphere. His writing was clear, crisp and on point. Never one to mince words, he called them like he saw them and did it with his unique and razor sharp wit. I wish him well. I for one will miss his voice and his music posts. He turned me on to several artists who I now like very much. I plan to leave his link up and I hope he leaves his blog up. They are worth reading.

Below, it's time to present, "separated at birth",

2010-12-19T08:21:00.002-09:00

R.I.P. Captain Beefheart (1941 - 2010)

2010-12-10T21:18:00.002-09:00

Some music to listen to on Friday night. Some of my favorites who still sound as good (to me) now, as they did back in the day. First up is Return to Forever. A band that should have been far better known.

Next up, Pat Metheny. Probably one of my all time favorites. Doing 'Third Wind' from the Still Life Talking album. Enjoy.

2010-11-30T20:38:00.002-09:00

Denali and the Chulitna River in the foreground.

2010-11-21T20:07:00.004-09:00

May everyone have a happy Thanksgiving. Here is a site showing some of the entrants to the National Geographic Annual Photo Contest. It's well worth a few minutes of your time.

Also, a rare voice of sanity in the climatic change debate, which has consisted mainly of over-hyped scare tactics and the shouting down of any who question the doom-sayers. This too is well worth the listen. H/T - Small Dead Animals;

The Light at the End of the Tunnel...

2010-11-14T13:13:00.001-09:00

2010-11-07T06:40:00.002-09:00

St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church (the old church) in Eklutna.

Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall...Literally!

2010-10-31T12:57:00.004-08:00

A hand held HDR. Taken early this morning while killing some time waiting for my daughter's hockey game to begin.

It's Open!

2010-10-24T15:50:00.004-08:00

I saw this over at Jaded Haven (see link below) and I had to embed it over here also. This is beautifully done and worth watching. The video is simply stunning and the music, I like too.

Last Walk Around Mirror Lake - Boom Bip (Boards of Canada Remix) from FroschYankee on Vimeo.

2010-10-18T20:22:00.002-08:00

2010-10-09T11:51:00.002-08:00

An HDR image taken last weekend near Portage. The haziness is from the rain which was coming down in a fine penetrating mist, being driven by a very high wind with almost knock you off your feet gusts. I didn't even think of trying to use my tripod in that setting and could barely hold the camera still. I didn't think that it would work, but it seems to have come out alright.

2010-10-03T08:40:00.001-08:00

2010-09-26T07:08:00.001-08:00

2010-09-18T07:44:00.001-08:00

Powerline Pass

2010-09-13T19:09:00.002-08:00

Taken this past Friday night while out on an evening mountain bike ride with my daughter.

2010-09-06T15:16:00.003-08:00

Have a safe & happy Labor Day!
An appropriate image for laboring.

2010-08-30T06:15:00.001-08:00

Preview of Coming Attractions

2010-08-23T05:42:00.002-08:00

Taken last fall.

The View From Penguin Ridge

2010-08-14T17:31:00.004-08:00

World War One Explained as a bar fight...
H/T - Theospark.net

Germany, Austria and Italy are standing together in the middle of the pub, when Serbia bumps into Austria, and spills Austria's pint.

Austria demands Serbia buy it a complete new suit, because there are splashes on its trouser leg.

Germany expresses its support for Austria's point of view

Britain recommends that everyone calm down a bit.

Serbia points out that it can't afford a whole suit, but offers to pay for cleaning Austria's trousers.

Russia and Serbia look at Austria.

Austria asks Serbia who it's looking at.

Russia suggests that Austria should leave its little brother alone.

Austria inquires as to whose army will assist Russia in compelling it to do so.

Germany appeals to Britain that France has been looking at it, and that this is sufficiently out of order that Britain should not intervene.

Britain replies that France can look at who it wants to, that Britain is looking at Germany too, and what is Germany going to do about it?

Germany tells Russia to stop looking at Austria, or Germany will render Russia incapable of such action.

Britain and France ask Germany whether it's looking at Belgium.

Turkey and Germany go off into a corner and whisper. When they come back, Turkey makes a show of not looking at anyone.

Germany rolls up its sleeves, looks at France, and punches Belgium.

France and Britain punch Germany. Austria punches Russia. Germany punches Britain and France with one hand and Russia with the other.

Russia throws a punch at Germany, but misses and nearly falls over. Japan calls over from the other side of the room that it's on Britain's side, but stays there. Italy surprises everyone by punching Austria.

Australia punches Turkey, and gets punched back. There are no hard feelings, because Britain made Australia do it.

France gets thrown through a plate glass window, but gets back up and carries on fighting. Russia gets thrown through another one, gets knocked out, suffers brain damage, and wakes up with a complete personality change.

Italy throws a punch at Austria and misses, but Austria falls over anyway. Italy raises both fists in the air and runs round the room chanting.

America waits till Germany is about to fall over from sustained punching from Britain and France, then walks over and smashes it with a barstool, then pretends it won the fight all by itself.

By now all the chairs are broken, and the big mirror over the bar is shattered. Britain, France and America agree that Germany threw the first punch, so the whole thing is Germany's fault . While Germany is still unconscious, they go through its pockets, steal its wallet, and buy drinks for all their friends.

2010-08-09T20:14:00.001-08:00

2010-08-06T05:50:00.001-08:00

2010-08-02T05:40:00.002-08:00

2010-07-27T07:01:00.001-08:00

2010-07-22T21:24:00.002-08:00

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings. - Eric Hoffer

Jump!!

2010-07-18T14:08:00.001-08:00

Life's a beach...

2010-07-10T08:54:00.002-08:00

An HDR image of the interior of Shattuck-St.Mary's School. A private prep school in Fairbault, Minnesota that was founded in 1858. This was taken at the entry to the admin building.

With today's digital cameras, their tremendous capability and even more unbelievable post production software, it's easy to forget how technologically cuting edge the pioneers of color photography were.
Here is a link to a site featuring the amazing color photos of Sergey Prokoudin-Gorsky taken between 1910 and 1915. He was commissioned by the Tsar to take photos of the Russian Empire.
It would be well worth your time to view these haunting images from a soon to be destroyed forever world.

2010-07-04T09:49:00.002-08:00

Eat Pie!!
Drink some root beer.
Kwitcherbellyaikin!

2010-06-25T05:54:00.001-08:00

2010-06-18T22:09:00.001-08:00

2010-06-10T21:17:00.001-08:00

Ship Lake Pass

2010-06-06T07:02:00.003-08:00

Saturday (6/5/10) my daughter and I hiked up to Ship Lake Pass. It was beautiful, but so windy that I could hardly hold my camera still. She enjoyed it the walk, except for her 'slow' dad holding her back.

2010-06-02T22:00:00.001-08:00

Generations Apart

2010-05-29T12:24:00.003-08:00

A Memorial Day thank you to those who have served and those who gave their lives in service to their country.

2010-05-22T12:04:00.001-08:00

2010-05-14T07:03:00.001-08:00

2010-05-06T21:42:00.001-08:00

From Last Summer

2010-04-30T06:02:00.006-08:00

Spring is in the air! I'm looking forward to getting back hiking in the hills this summer. To that end, I ran into a very well done and interesting photo blog. It's Atom's Picture Blog and if anyone who visit's here likes this blog, I think that you'll very much enjoy Adam's too.

2010-04-25T08:22:00.001-08:00

2010-04-17T14:48:00.001-08:00

2010-04-08T19:00:00.003-08:00

Fast food arches? Perhaps in neolithic times. This is a whalebone arch, taken in Barrow, Tuesday, (4/6/10)looking out on the Chukchi Sea.

2010-03-31T19:39:00.007-08:00

Here's a little something from Dillard & Clark, 'Train leaves Here this Morning' and 'In the Plan.'
It's off of a great album they cut back in 1969, 'The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark'. If you don't know who Doug Dillard and Gene Clark were, you should. Anyway if you like bluegrass/country give it a listen. If you don't, give it a listen anyway. These guys were exceptionally good.

One more track by Allison Krause and Robert Plant of 'Through the Morning, Through the Night' which gives the Dillard & Clark standard a run for its money.