memfree's Journal: Alaska news

My old town is getting money from the U.S. government to buy and use technology developed by Tessera Technology of San Jose, CA, and Superconductor Technologies Inc. of Santa Barbara, CA. There are two goals here: 1) create Nanosensors -- low energy, remote sensing computers the size of simple transmitters they now use for tagging/tracking frogs. The research will be done by the University (no info on their web site yet, but here's a teaser from one of the profs, and a bit about the program).That is the reported part. The other part is just my speculation, but is based on years of observation; namely 2), to buoy the Fairbanks economy a little bit. :-)

In other Fairbanks news: does anyone remember that a year ago today, some stupid bozo shot the oil pipeline just outside Fairbanks? Anyone remember the momentary fear that it was related to the WTC and/or anthrax attacks? Probably not. The complete lack of pipeline security remains the same, but now, state officials are also annoyed that the operators haven't done enough to clean up the spill. The company contends that the state isn't giving them enough credit. Story here.

Personally, I am unconcerned that no one outside Alaska is reporting on the latter, but it *does* kinda remind me of the more recent Uranium debacle -- where it was first reported to be 11 pounds getting smuggled, then a few ounces, then it turns out that it wasn't uranium -- only most news services didn't bother mentioning that last fact.

Yes, I do remember that

[Some Woman]

I remember realizing how poorly we guard something upon which we are woefully dependent. I wonder how long it would take them to notice if a portion of the oil in the pipeline was diverted by, say, some wiley Canadians?

I can't believe they haven't cleaned it up yet. No, wait. I guess I can. Private companies do as little as they can get away with to clean up their messes. It took three weeks for the electrical company here to clean up a spill in our driveway that was bad enough that we should close our windows and not breathe it to much. It was apparently nasty enough that they had to tear up our driveway and cart it away. If it hadn't been for a second transformer bursting, I doubt they would have done anything at all. We were already in the process of seeing how to get the government to make them clean it up.