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• Commented on How scientists determined how many humans two lions ate in 1898
  The precision is usually not that great when interpreting the proportion of various foods which are digested and then metabolized into hair or bone. I'm not sure if the exact numbers of ingested and metabolized people can be determined. However,...
• Commented on Wearable hummingbird feeder: they'll think your eyes are juicy, delicious flowers!
  In Tucson the hummingbirds would not wait for me to hang their feeder. they would come up to the feeder while I was holding it carefully, walking across the yard to the tree. I had to wait for them to...
• Commented on Saturday Morning Science Experiment: Pachyderm Dental Care
  Really, peroxide is nothing to be flippant about. Those guys should have worn safety glasses and gloves throughout the entire piece. Also fun-- brush teeth with toothpaste, one of the Crest types. Then, rinse and swish mouth with regular hydrogen...
• Commented on Eagle Vs. Reindeer
  Circa 1992, one of the Park Rangers at Bandelier National Monument (actually, everyone in the park at that end of the main canyon) witnessed a golden eagle take off with a struggling elk calf....
• Commented on A drink that sounds even more unappetizing than "Dairy Drink"
  "lea" part of the name comes from a forage plant (whether the common or Latin name I don't recall and it is only part of the name), I believe, or some such rich delicious cow grass. "Lucerne", another milk name,...
• Commented on Hovercraft's 50th anniversary and a human-powered version
  The Unorganized Borough (Alaska) has the only hovercraft delivered postal service in the USA (delivers food, fuel, washing machines, Pampers, school supplies, and the occasional medevac or Elders ice fishing. Only the last aren't a Post Office contracted service). Instructions...
• Commented on Cryptic Alaska "blob" is an algae bloom
  It's not even August so I don't understand the interest in Alaska's slime. We get this all over Alaska. However, a 12 mile blob is impressive. (Cut Alaska's blob in half and it is still bigger than Texas)....
• Commented on Eco-friendly textile coffins
  Hair (keratin, as in fur and wool) is not readily degradeable. It's one of the toughest environmental samples to dissolve in the lab and very long-lived in pre-coffin cemeteries. Seems to me a paper coffin, but handled on a firm...
• Commented on Sarah Palin, via Twitter: God told me to sue the internet
  #73 Does anyone know if there is any precedent for an elected leader, either governor, US congressman or senator, resigning their office when they were *NOT* either facing a terminal illness or were about to be indicted or otherwise...
• Commented on Sarah Palin, via Twitter: God told me to sue the internet
  # so I'll make attempt to keep up w/attaching corrected info. I head 2 West AK villages today, look forward to their busy comm fish activity! -about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry I hadn't been following the tweets (the official...
• Commented on Britain's secret plan for surviving a nuclear war
  Pres Reagan (out of Nixon via Cheney Rumsfeld, et al on towards Bush II and VP-Palin) pressured many communities to plan for nuclear war and to adopt evacuation plans (Star Wars and the Peace Shield would protect us. Now we...
• Commented on The Marshallese in Arkansas and other unexpected diasporas
  "Unexpected" can mean a number of things. former Yugoslavia (Albanians, Montenegro, Macedonia)in Bethel, Alaska Samoans and American Samoans in Anchorage, Alaska Old Believers (Russia) in southern Alaska Koreans in Bethel, Alaska recently Hmong, Sudanese, Somali relocating to Anchorage...
• Commented on Cat Workout
  Qiviut prefers yoga. http://www.yogakitty.com/yogavideos.html...
• Commented on Spanish Flu of 1918: how bad was it?
  Remember that5 those are overall numbers-- 60% of Alaskans died (Alaskans outside of the city), in 1919. The descriptions of the Pueblos in New Mexico at the time, people who seemed to recover then died, are evocative of the impact...
• Commented on Swine Flu Q & A
  A guide to Masks — Types, Choosing (PPE) - http://ykalaska.wordpress.com/2006/04/13/masks-%e2%80%94-types-choosing-ppe/ is useful for understanding whether to protect others (breathing out, i.e., mask) or protect from others (breathing in, i.e., respirators). An alternate form, that I can't yet get the state...
• Commented on Naked Baby Plays a Synthesizer (video)
  Nora the Cat should do a duet with kid....
• Commented on Japanese V-Sign
  Here;s this discussion but 6 years ago, http://www.jref.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-1919.html Evidently Churchill used it in both directions, at least initially....
• Commented on Japanese V-Sign
  Schoolchildren in western Alaska today (primarily Eskimo) also use the two-fingered peace sign as a hold-oover from the hippie days (Peace, brother!)-- after all, nearly all the news photos of that erra show someone with the peace symbol as soon...
• Commented on Charts: 3
  an alternate view of density-- "While flying from Alaska to San Francisco, Chris Nye, also of the Alaska Volcano Observatory, looked out the jet window at clusters of houses in the Lower 48. He wondered how much land it would...
• Commented on Charts: 3
  In the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, part of the Unorganized Borough and bigger than Oregon, we have 1/2 person per square mile. Of course, it is currently -45 F with wind chill and one must choose between heat and food (Emmonak and...
• Commented on HOWTO ride a London Bus, Colonial Film Board 1950
  We need something like this for Alaska. There are a lot of us having to move to Anchorage from the tundra-sticks. (Moving to Wasilla is only for rich folks.) Don't sneer at checking to see where the bus is going....
• Commented on Manual for a post-war British bungalow
  In Los Alamos, NM the government-issued housing built in the late 50s and 60s (pre-open town) also comes with instructions from the Zia Co. (the construction arm of the old science lab and the original army lab). The labels were...
• Commented on Edge-notched cards: stacks of papercraft hypertext
  #15-- bronze would be a good choice except that the prices for metals these days results in a new definition of grave robbing (bronze and brass plaques and memorials)...
• Commented on Edge-notched cards: stacks of papercraft hypertext
  The modern version was called Abney (or Abby?) cards, I believe. I have seen the commercial set (with punch, giant safety pin). I made my own for my dissertation with colored markers on 3 by 5 or 4 by 6...
• Commented on What did I plant in my vegetable garden, part 2
  Why brew a chemical pesticide when you can train one of those cute blonde/blue garden gnomes to flap her sundress?...
• Commented on What did I plant in my vegetable garden?
  Yes, mints have square stems. How about amaranth?...
• Commented on D.C. to require ID to enter certain neighborhoods?
  In 1971, many people found out that DC had an identification law because they were prosecuted for failure to produce such (even those nowhere near the demonstration areas)...
• Commented on Man trains rat to sit on cat to sit on dog
  This reminds me of the Buster Brown Show which used to have a cat which played the bass fiddle and a mouse which played the piano. That was amazing!...
• Commented on PoopReport's charity drive for women's latrines in Uttar Pradesh
  See also February 10, 2004 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0210/p06s01-wosc.html India's new loos save lives Consider the Sulabh Institute's Museum of Toilets. Tucked away in a working class neighborhood on New Delhi's southwestern side, the Toilet Museum features exhibits donated by some...
• Commented on WWW domain country codes of the world
  I want the US Minor Outlying Islands domain back-- Where is… Alaska.UnorganizedBorough.um...