Bridalveil Falls

Yellow Jacket Creek

Happy Independence Day

The June 15th Annual Anchorage 100K Ride

This ride is an event put on by the Alaska Randonneurs.  It's a 100K (62.3mile) circuit of anchorage on mostly bike trails, but some roads too.  A fun ride.  This highly compressed video goes from the start to a short way past the first control.  Set it for HD and enjoy...

Some sobering numbers from the 'Zero Hedge' blog...

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

The numbers that you are about to see are likely to shock you.  They prove that the global financial Ponzi scheme is far more extensive than most people would ever dare to imagine. 

As you will see below, the total amount of debt in the world is now more than three times greater than global GDP.  In other words, you could take every single good and service produced on the entire planet this year, next year and the year after that and it still would not be enough to pay off all the debt.  But even that number pales in comparison to the exposure that big global banks have to derivatives contracts.  It is hard to put into words how reckless they have been.  At the low end of the estimates, the total exposure that global banks have to derivatives contracts is 710 trillion dollars.

That is an amount of money that is almost unimaginable.  And the reality of the matter is that there is really not all that much actual "money" in circulation today.  In fact, as you will read about below, there is only a little bit more than a trillion dollars of U.S. currency that you can actually hold in your hands in existence.  If we all went out and tried to close our bank accounts and investment portfolios all at once, that would create a major league crisis.  The truth is that our financial system is little more than a giant pyramid scheme that is based on debt and paper promises.  It is literally a miracle that it has survived for so long without collapsing already.

When Americans think about the financial crisis that we are facing, the largest number that they usually can think of is the size of the U.S. national debt.  And at over 17 trillion dollars, it truly is massive.  But it is actually the 2nd-smallest number on the list below.  The following are 12 numbers about the global financial Ponzi scheme that should be burned into your brain...

-$1,280,000,000,000 - Most people are really surprised when they hear this number.  Right now, there is only 1.28 trillion dollars worth of U.S. currency floating around out there.

-$17,555,165,805,212.27 - This is the size of the U.S. national debt.  It has grown by more than 10 trillion dollars over the past ten years.

-$32,000,000,000,000 - This is the total amount of money that the global elite have stashed in offshore banks (that we know about).

-$48,611,684,000,000 - This is the total exposure that Goldman Sachs has to derivatives contracts.

-$59,398,590,000,000 - This is the total amount of debt (government, corporate, consumer, etc.) in the U.S. financial system.  40 years ago, this number was just a little bit above 2 trillion dollars.

-$70,088,625,000,000 - This is the total exposure that JPMorgan Chase has to derivatives contracts.

-$71,830,000,000,000 - This is the approximate size of the GDP of the entire world.

-$75,000,000,000,000 - This is approximately the total exposure that German banking giant Deutsche Bank has to derivatives contracts.

-$100,000,000,000,000 - This is the total amount of government debt in the entire world.  This amount has grown by $30 trillion just since mid-2007.

-$223,300,000,000,000 - This is the approximate size of the total amount of debt in the entire world.

-$236,637,271,000,000 - According to the U.S. government, this is the total exposure that the top 25 banks in the United States have to derivatives contracts.  But those banks only have total assets of about 9.4 trillion dollars combined.  In other words, the exposure of our largest banks to derivatives outweighs their total assets by a ratio of about 25 to 1.

-$710,000,000,000,000 to $1,500,000,000,000,000 - The estimates of the total notional value of all global derivatives contracts generally fall within this range.  At the high end of the range, the ratio of derivatives exposure to global GDP is about 21 to 1.

Most people tend to assume that the "authorities" have fixed whatever caused the financial world to almost end back in 2008, but that is not the case at all.
In fact, the total amount of government debt around the globe has grown by about 40 percent since then, and the "too big to fail banks" have collectively gotten 37 percent larger since then.
Our "authorities" didn't fix anything.  All they did was reinflate the bubble and kick the can down the road for a little while.

I don't know how anyone can take an honest look at the numbers and not come to the conclusion that this is completely and totally unsustainable.
How much debt can the global financial system take before it utterly collapses?
How recklessly can the big banks behave before the house of cards that they have constructed implodes underneath them?

For the moment, everything seems fine.  Stock markets around the world have been setting record highs and credit is flowing like wine.
But at some point a day of reckoning is coming, and when it arrives it is going to be the most painful financial crisis the world has ever seen.
If you plan on getting ready before it strikes, now is the time to do so.

Just A Rider In The Rain

This was taken at the (4a.m.) start of the Alaska Randonneurs 5/31/14, Anchorage/Seward/Anchorage ride.  I did the 200K to Seward and took the train back.  IT was very wet and windy leaving Anchorage, as you can see.  Enjoy!

Don't Forget D-Day

Let's not forget D-Day



 On this day, 6/6/2014, please take a few moments of silence to remember those who served and were at Normandy on D-Day.

I saw this at American Digest, it's from the Diplomad's site. Fitting for this day.

I can no longer call him inept and incompetent. He is malevolent. He is out to destroy the spirit that built and sustained the country, and was evident on the beaches and along the hedgerows of Normandy seventy years ago. He detests our military and makes no effort to hide that. His recent speech at West Point, of course, is either an example of how little this little man understands his role as Commander-in-Chief, or is the product of an ideology that hates the cadets and their values--I go with the second interpretation.

The DiploMad 2.0:

Motion

Today is Memorial Day

Please remember take take a moment and silently thank those who gave "the last full measure of devotion" so that we may remain free. 

St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church Cemetery

Eklutna, Alaska

A tone mapping of an older photo taken flying between Juneau & Gustavus.

It appears spring is threatening to show up, which saying so, in April in Alaska is always tempting fate.  However, the weather has been good enough to get a good start on bicycling.

Yesterday, the Alaska Randonneurs held their second ride of the season.  I did a 100K and though a little windy in places, it wasn't too chilly.  Below is the route.

Happy Easter

A happy Easter to those few who venture to this remote corner of the internet.

Below is a little something for your consideration first published in 2006.
It's, I hope, well worth a little of your time.

Did you ever break a promise?
Did you ever break a vow?
Have you traded love for money,
And are you happy now?
Did you kiss him in the garden,
And then abandon him to fate?
Is your final sin forgiven,
Or is it far too late?


One little non-Easter tidbit;

The beatings will continue until morale improves...
So relentless is this brainwashing that it percolates throughout the curriculum, so that even exam papers in French, English or religious studies can ask students to explain why the world is dangerously warming up, or why we must build more wind turbines. In 2012, I described an A-level general studies paper set by our leading exam board, AQA, asking for comment on 11 pages of propagandist “source materials”, riddled with basic errors. A mother wrote to tell me how her intelligent son, after getting straight As on all his science papers, used his extensive knowledge of climate science to point out all their absurd distortions.

He was given the lowest possible mark, a fail. When his mother paid to have his paper independently assessed, the new examiner conceded that it was “articulate, well-structured” and well-informed. But because it did not parrot the party line, it was still given a fail. I fear this corruption of everything that education and science should stand for has become a much more serious scandal than Mr Gove yet realizes.

Read the whole thing here.

Reflections

In light of the latest junk science from the UN's IPCC touting global warming , err "climate change", I thought it fitting to link to this article about James Lovelock.
Lovelock is was a leading light in the environmentalist movement.

From the article.

Green guru and geophysicist James Lovelock, considered one of the pioneering scientists of the 20th century, has officially turned his back on man-made global warming claims and the green movement’s focus on renewable energy. Lovelock conceived the Gaia theory back in the 1970s, describing the Earth’s biosphere as “an active, adaptive control system able to maintain the earth in homeostasis.”...

The newly skeptical Lovelock responded: ”Well, that’s my privilege. You see, I’m an independent scientist. I’m not funded by some government department or commercial body or anything like that. If I make a mistake, then I can go public with it. And you have to, because it is only by making mistakes that you can move ahead.”

Lovelock dismissed the entire basis for global warming concerns in his BBC television interview. “Take this climate matter everybody is thinking about. They all talk, they pass laws, they do things, as if they knew what was happening. I don’t think anybody really knows what’s happening. They just guess. And a whole group of them meet together and encourage each other’s guesses,” Lovelock explained.

Please, do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

Just to gauge how big of a change that is, here are some earlier quotes.

Writing in the British newspaper The Independent in January 2006, Lovelock argued that, as a result of global warming, "billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable" by the end of the 21st century.^[27] He has been quoted in The Guardian that 80% of humans will perish by 2100 AD, and this climate change will last 100,000 years. According to James Lovelock, by 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine. Indeed "[t]he people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain".^[28]

"By 2040, parts of the Sahara desert will have moved into middle Europe. We are talking about Paris – as far north as Berlin. In Britain we will escape because of our oceanic position."^[28]

"If you take the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictions, then by 2040 every summer in Europe will be as hot as it was in 2003 – between 110F and 120F. It is not the death of people that is the main problem, it is the fact that the plants can't grow – there will be almost no food grown in Europe."^[28]

"We are about to take an evolutionary step and my hope is that the species will emerge stronger. It would be hubris to think humans as they now are God's chosen race."

Irrational Exuberance, or just Passing Gas

(UPDATED, Scroll Down)

Lately, there has been a lot of hyperbolic optimism with respect to the Shale, tight oil, fracking boom that the US has been experiencing.  It is a good thing, don't misunderstand me.  However, some seem to think that it's the end of our energy worries and it's back to the good times!

More sober assessments, while optimistic, are a bit more guarded.
From an article at Zero Hedge,


"Our analysis suggests that commentators and policymakers need to better distinguish between the ways in which the US shale gas boom constitutes a ‘revolution’ and the ways in which it does not. The US unconventional energy boom has reversed the decline of domestic production, significantly lowered oil and gas imports, reduced gas costs for consumers, and created a political space for tougher regulations on coal-fired power plants. But it is not a panacea. Even if current estimates of production turn out to be accurate, the benefits to the US economy in the long run are relatively small, and the benefits to manufacturing competitiveness in most sectors are even smaller. In the longer term, US energy security and climate goals will still require a strong role for public policy frameworks. Improving energy efficiency and promoting low-carbon technologies will be just as important as before. For the EU, given its more limited known reserves of unconventional oil and gas, these conclusions are likely to be all the more relevant."

Read the whole thing here.

All the more important considering how our so-called leaders have utterly squandered the last eight years.

Least that cast a gray cloud over your sunshine, there's this...

"The promises that you save for the future have collapsed into dust as interest rates have been driven lower making savings utterly worthless. There is no such thing as saving and living off your fixed income. The elderly are being driven back into the work force and the whole ideas that a generation believed in are vanishing before their eyes.
So it is no longer communists and dictators that are the targets. All governments are now the targets and when the economy turns down after 2015.75, the threat of civilization will be pulled apart by the self-interest of politicians clinging to power to the detriment of the people."


 

Worth a few minutes of your time. My mom e-mailed this to me the other day.

Shadows & Light

3/15/2014.  I took this Saturday morning after we received around 18 inches of snow the previous night.

"More than three-quarters of Americans say the five-year bull market in U.S. stocks has had little or no effect on their financial well-being."
 

    Man & his best friend.

The Lee Shore

Here's a great wingsuit clip...

Anchorage Saturday Morning 3/01/2014

A three exposure HDR composit taken with my Canon 7D, a Tamron 18-270 lens, ISO:100, bracketed at -2,0,2.  No polarizer.

The fog lies low over the water of Knik Arm.  Spring is coming!

1930 Packard

The Hudson

Two interesting articles below....

America Didn't Decline. It Went Global  (found on Politico, but interesting none the less)

By Sean Starrs | 2/24/2014

We’ve been obsessing over the decline or persistence of American power for more
than three decades now. The latest example is a Gallup poll out Monday
showing rising dissatisfaction with the United States’ standing in the world —
but it all started with a wave of declinism in the 1980s, set off by the rise of Japan. Then the
doom and gloom suddenly vanished amid the triumphalism of the 1990s, which
transformed the United States into the world’s only superpower. After the Sept. 11 attacks
and the invasion of Iraq, many thought “empire” was a better moniker, with the United
States apparently able to reshape world order virtually at will. And then just a few years
later — poof! — declinism returned with a vengeance, with American power supposedly
crashing like the latest Hollywood reality queen. China supplanted Japan as a hegemon on
the rise, and the biggest global financial crisis since 1929 — emanating from the United
States itself — was allegedly the final nail in the coffin of the American century.

But really? Is it really possible for American power in the world to flip-flop so wildly over
the decades? Surely, the economic underpinnings of national power run deeper than that?
And throughout these waves of conventional wisdom over the decades, there have always
been contrarians, including in the present. So how is it possible for commentators to look
at the same data and come to completely opposite conclusions?

Lynn Canal

Over the Top

Via Insatpundit;

New Day Dawning...

My apologies for posting several pictures of the same scene (though I rather like them or I wouldn't post them), but with my knee finally feeling better, I will be getting out & about more.

Here is a little tidbit I received via e-mail from a weight lifting site I subscribe to;
Read it and ask yourself, could you imagine Obama doing that?
Hell, could you imagine Obama even spending time with wounded soldiers?

The last time he went to Afghanistan, he met with Marines only after they had been disarmed.
American Marines, disarmed before being allowed in the same building with the American president.
The mind reels...

With today being President's day, here's
a presidential feat of strength that you
probably haven't heard before:
*******************************************
On the day of April 8th, 1865, President
Lincoln was at a Union Army field hospital
in Virginia. spending hours shaking hands
and greeting thousands of wounded soldiers.
At the end of that long day, he spotted an
ax and walked over to it.
He was able to grip the ax by the very end
of the handle and hold the 7-pound tool
parallel to the ground, motionless.  He was
56 years old at the time.
"Strong men who looked on, men accustomed
to manual labor, could not hold the same
ax in that position for a moment," wrote
Francis Fisher Browne, a Union soldier who
authored a biography called "The Every-Day
Life of Abraham Lincoln."
Lincoln performed this feat on several
occasions and it was never mentioned
that anyone could duplicate it.

View From the Porch 1-25-2014

Via Instapundit...

Greatness, Past & Present

The trans Alaska Pipeline.
Construction on the Trans Alaska pipeline began on March 27, 1975 and was completed on May 31, 1977. It's approximately 800 miles long and crosses some of the roughest, coldest, most remote country in North America. It has survived earthquakes, attempts at sabotage, and has produced without a spill. The environmental destruction many said would result never happened.

Today, with the environmental laws, workplace requirements, and numerous other impediments, this pipeline would take at least twice as long to build, if it could be built at all.  Similarly, a nation, the only nation, to have placed men on the moon and brought them safely home numerous times can no longer put men in space on its own. Both conditions are self-inflicted. We still have the capability, but the will is eroding. How familiar today's prevalent attitudes would seem to the Romans of the early 4th century.

View From The Porch 1-17-14

A large low pressure cell moved in, making the temperatures shoot above freezing.
So now we have melting snow, rain, and high wind warnings.
A real slop fest.
This is a hand held, four exposure HDR. ISO:200.

Ruminations On The War On Poverty

While visiting Samizdata, a very well written blog, I came across this comment, "The United States, since the times of the “Great Society”, has spent approximately 24 trillion dollars on anti-poverty programs, while the percentage of those considered to be in poverty has remained the same. With a 50 year track record as evidence of the utter failure of the welfare state, it amazes me that the public continues to buy into this form of wealth re-distribution."

An insightful observation.
Needless to say, you always get someone to disagree. So I decided to look it up as best I could in a short amount of time. Here's what I came up with after a brief search.


Federal spending, population and poverty totals [iii]

                    Total              People in           Welfare              Expenditure                   Population[iv]     Poverty[v]        Expenditures[vi]     Per Person                  (Millions)          (Millions)            (Billions)              In Poverty

1960           179.5                  39.9                  $17.7                  $445

1970           202.2                  25.4                  $43.9                 $1,726

1980           225.0                  29.3                 $128.8                $4,399

1990            248.6                 33.6                 $138.2                $4,116

2000            278.9                 31.6                 $205.4                $6,503

2010            305.7                 46.2                 $349.6                $7,571

2011           308.5                  46.2                 $369.2                $7,983

2012           310.6                  46.5                 $356.8                $7,674

These figures came from the Federal Safety Net site.
That totals $52,245 for a family of four even though the Poverty Threshold for such a family is $23,492


Next I went over to Wikipedia.



So, what's a person to make of this?
I think we could conclude that the 24 trillion dollars spent to fight poverty have been a failure.
Yet we continue to spend ever larger amounts to combat poverty and now also it's evil cousin income inequality.  Our current occupant of the White House has publicly stated he wants to "spread the wealth around." 
I paraphrase a definition of insanity (and stupidity) as 'doing the same thing over & over but expecting a different result.'

I fervently hope that it begins to dawn on those who still think this type of waste is actually good and a better alternative than growing the economy, that it is NOT about helping the poor. It never has been. It's about power, control, creating a dependent underclass who will always support you out of necessity.
Or as Lyndon B. Johnson said, "I’ll have those n*****s voting Democrat for the next 200 years."
His words, not mine.


Finally, let me leave you with two items via American Digest.

The first this comment.
 "There are 8 levels of control that must be obtained before you are able to create a fascist state. The first is the most important. 1) Healthcare – Control healthcare and you control the people
2) Poverty – Increase the Poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.
3) Debt – Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty.
4) Gun Control – Remove the ability for citizens to defend themselves from the Government. That way you are able to create a police state.
5) Welfare – Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, and Income)
6) Education – Take control of what people read and listen to – take control of what children learn in school.
7) Religion – Remove the belief in the God from the Government and schools
8) Class Warfare – Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to take (Tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor.
Does any of this sound like what is happening to the United States " 

And finally,

London Calling...

Arguably the westernmost phone booths in North America.  Taken at Dutch Harbor.

Boy Scout Motto; "Be Prepared"

A view of the transfer switch I installed this fall. A switch for the house and a switch for the garage.
The generator plugs in at the receptacle between the second transfer switch and the window.
It's nice to have a tested backup.

Happy New Years 2014

Here's to hoping that 2014 is better, in all respects, than 2013.

Here's a little something I saw over at American Digest.

It rings true and more succinctly sums up what I have tried to say in the past.

The "learned helplessness" is so deep it shows up even in our fantasy life. This is why I beg people to find ANY way to fight back. Stop looking for The One way to fight back. To make up for not fighting back we imagine we, or someone that will fight on our behalf, will find the one unguarded and vital target where we can attack and win in an instant. Politically, we fantasize about finding the weak spot in The Death Star and firing a kill shot.

The Left didn't bring the country under their control that way. The Left has published books on how to fight the system. They fought the system. They now own the system. The Left waged a Long March through the culture. We keep engaging in Short Retreats to the next "gated-community" that we hope will protect us from liberal domination.Start fighting in small ways, anywhere, and it will give you confidence to fight more and the tide will turn IF liberals find they can't rely on never finding opposition. Use direct language. Call them communists, racists, sexist, traitors, etc. You don't gain respect by speaking in moderate language about the people that are setting fire to this country.

This isn't Sunday School. This is a Civil War. The Left already knows it. They already fight like it's a Civil War. You might as well face up to it. Posted by: Scott M at December 31, 2013 1:14 PM