I agree that there are a great number of self-absorbed, greedy Marie "Let them eat cake" Antoinettes in this country. Nevertheless, I think your view is overly simplistic.
But they were right if you look at the true disparity in rich and poor. The poor in the rest of the world live in fricking dirt holes. The poorest in the USA live like the rich in many 3rd world countries.
There is indeed a huge disparity between the rich and the poor in the U.S. I've been on both sides of that situation (well...maybe not quite "rich", but I'm a very comfortable middle-class to upper middle-class right now). I've also been to some of the poorest parts of Alaska and to Guatemala. Quite honestly, I'd rather move to Guatemala than some of the places I've been in Alaska, and not just because the weather was nicer there:) Guatemala: running water and flush toilets, even if the toilet paper has to go in the trash can. Chevak, Alaska: no running water, and "honey buckets" (pro-tip -- it's not honey in there).
The gap between the worlds poor and rich is growing exponentially. right now the top 1% of the united states could buy real homes for 100% of the worlds poor and still be the top 1% rich. Yes it's that bad. And it will get worse.
How do you propose to solve that problem? This is something I have thought about quite a bit in my lifetime. Like I mentioned above, I don't have everything I want but I certainly have far more than I need. Meanwhile, there are people around the world who don't have enough to survive on. That bothers me. But the solution isn't as simple as, "give my excess to others." Sure, there are ways to help support others. My wife and I sponsor a girl who is the same age as our daughter (11) in Guatemala so that she can attend a private school and get a better education than she would otherwise. I've been to the school, and I've met the little girl (photos from the trip, although I didn't include my sponsor child, out of respect for her privacy). That's a start, but how do the rich in the western world feed the families who are starving in Ethiopia and Somalia? Do you remember "Blackhawk Down?" That movie was based upon the true story of what happens when well-intentioned westerners try to feed some of those poor in other parts of the world. The fact is that there are those who derive their power from the oppression of others. Consequently, "feeding the poor" often means removing their oppressors from power first so the food will actually get to the poor, rather than the local warlord. Are you willing to go to war so that sub-Saharan Africa can eat America and Europe's surplus? I won't argue that that might be one of the best reasons for taking up arms since the Revolutionary War, but you'd better understand what it would take to raise the third world up to first world standards and you'd also better be okay with overthrowing the local powers-that-be so you can build your idea of Utopia (*cough* "Iraq" *cough*).
It self perpetuates. The rich will not pay for things for the evil PARASITES to use. Walk to work you prole! a lot of things can be done to turn it all around. problem is it gives things to the poor, and that just can not be allowed to happen.
I don't want to pay for things so that those-who-can-but-won't can just sponge off of everyone else, no. I don't mind helping those who are simply down on their luck and need a hand getting back on their feet, however. "Give a man a fish...teach a man to fish..." And like I said above, it isn't really as simple as just giving my surplus to those in need. Making sure the surplus gets to those who truly need it is a big problem. If you can solve that problem, you'll be making a big difference in the world.
Do you have trees on your property? I imagine that the sun "strobing" through one of these would be much like the sun "strobing" through the branches of the tree right outside your living room window as the wind blows. IME, it's never been that much of a problem.
I'm actually trying to figure out what it would cost to put up a couple of (admittedly smaller) wind turbines on my property. Electricity and heating oil (I'm about a quarter mile past where the natural gas utility stops delivering service) are getting $$$ and since there's plenty of wind in my neighborhood, I am seriously considering supplementing my energy consumption with some wind turbines and/or solar power.
Having said that, I am rather interested in DIY drones, and therefore, I have been following technical and legal aspects of amateur drones/UAVs/UAS' for a couple of years. I don't see any *technical* reason why what you want to do isn't possible. However, if you live in the USA, I don't believe what you want to do is legal. As I understand, the FAA requires amateur operated drones to be under line-of-site control at all times. Here are some links to help you figure out the legal restrictions for what you want to do:
What, exactly, does a bomb look like in the post 9/11 world? Because in the only two cases that I'm aware of where someone *actually* had a bomb on an airplane, one looked like a pair of underwear, and the other one looked like a shoe. Clearly, we should therefore ban all underwear and all shoes on airliners, right?
That's the problem, though. I'm not saying you are wrong with what you say above, but in the last ten years, we've ramped up the paranoia to record levels. I suspect that if the U.S. *really* faced a credible terrorist threat* the fear alone would kill us all.
*like Israel faces daily now, or like Ireland, Italy or Germany did back when I was a kid in the '70s.
The contents of any business person's carry-on bag looks like that on an X-ray scanner. Phone, MP3 layer, USB cables, laptop and power brick, bent paper clip to reset dodgy devices, RSA security key for remote VPN access, prototype PCB for the embedded device my company is working on, etc. By the time that tangle of wires gets to the airport, it WILL look like a horrid science experiment that is a pound of C4 away from blowing up.
I had a lot of fun like that with TSA about four years ago.
I am an amateur musician, and I was travelling to a musician's conference halfway across the country...with my electric guitar, assorted effects pedals, a drum machine, a sequencer, a portable digital mixing board/digital recorder, enough cables and wall warts to connect everything together, and my laptop. I got to the security line, and TSA is droning on with their "please remove all laptops from your bags" spiel, so I removed the laptop but left everything else packed. They pretty much freaked out when they saw the collection of wires and electronic gadgets in the x-ray machine, but after I explained what I was carrying and placed each electronic gadget into one of their security-approved plastic bins, they calmed back down. I didn't leave my tangle on the airplane, though.
At 30 feet off the ground, your anemometer is measuring a very localized wind direction, which, depending upon terrain, vegetation, etc., can be very different from your neighbor's wind direction 100 yards away. I have stood in my yard during wind storms and watched the trees on either side of my house blowing in different directions, due to wind being funneled in ravines near my house.
They didn't say in the wind map page (of if they did, I didn't see it), but I suspect they are taking an average wind speed and direction from a number of points. YMMV.
At home, I use RAIC: "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Computers":)
Okay, okay...that's really only *part* of the backup strategy. I also use a Time Machine with mine and my wife's Macs; my Linux machines used to backup to a separate hard drive using tar and gzip, but I haven't set that up again since we moved into our new house a year ago.
At work, we use a combination of rsync and ln, like so:
Backup Server Side:
#!/bin/bash
for CLIENT in `ls/backups/`
do
rm -Rf/backups/${CLIENT}/yesterday
ln/backups/${CLIENT}/today/backups/${CLIENT}/yesterday
done
DIsclaimer: this is more pseudocode than actual code. We actually keep 90 days of backups at work, and dump the last day of the month to an external hard drive which is stored off-site, so it's a bit more complicated than I've suggested above. However, you should be able to get the general idea from what I've posted.
Supposedly, motion also works with IP cameras, but I haven't tried it. If so, then you can get away with the whole "1 usb cables' length from the camera" requirement. Since you don't want your video record to be stolen while the thief is in your house, you might consider using a virtual server on some hosting provider's service, but considering how much data motion captures, that might not fit the "cheap" aspect of the submitter's specifications.
If no-one (except the police, and professional criminals who'll mostly use them in gang wars), everyone will be safer.
But if you have a gun, you'll feel safer, but make everyone else less safe (as a criminal may sell it). This is especially true if street criminals (who probably wouldn't have guns if they weren't so cheap on the blackmarket) don't have them.
I beg to disagree. It's trivial to lie with statistics, and I won't pretend that most (if not all) of the sites returned by Google aren't biased, but...:stats on gun ownership vs. violent crime.
My Mossberg has a pistol grip with a full stock (like an M-16) and a pistol grip on the pump. It's incredibly intuitive to aim and shoot. If I had to pick just one gun in my house to keep, it would definitely be the Mossberg.
You don't want to be like those pathetic police officers who shoot 80 rounds at a person (or cougar) at 15 yards and hit him twice.
That's the beauty of a shotgun -- it's like playing horseshoes. You don't have to be a marksman, you only have to be close enough.
I enjoy target shooting. I may not be a crack shot, but I am decent enough at close combat ranges with either my FS92 or my Super Blackhawk. However, the gun I keep in my bedroom is a Mossberg Mariner, for all the reasons you mention above (except for "getting off in court" since my shotgun will never be confused with a bird gun -- it looks evil). When the feces has collided with the impeller, I am much more confident of being able to stop an intruder with double-ought buckshot than with anything else.
If I have to fly to a wedding or for business, I have no choice. Many destinations are reachable by air only, or would involve something like a 48 hour round trip drive.
Pfff...only 48 hours? It would take me at least twice that just to reach Seattle. Anything south or east of there is even more time. Not that I'm bitter about it or anything...
At roughly 43mpg on my motorcycle, and 9 miles from my house to the nearest Best Buy, I can guarantee you that I spend far, far less on gasoline ($1.05) than on shipping charges (at least $5 for USPS, an order of magnitude more for overnight and sometimes even 2nd day shipping). Of course, I live in Alaska, so 1) that only applies to the summer; in winter, driving my truck is slightly less one-sided ($3.22 for gas, if roads are clear, double that if roads are bad); and 2) shipping costs are outrageous compared to lower-48 costs. Also, Best Buy is on my route home, so if I stop by on my way home from work, that makes gas costs even less of an issue.
Let me see if I understand this...we are going to pass a law preventing U.S. companies from complying with the laws of other sovereign nations with whom they do business, if we feel that those nations are being oppressive to their people. Meanwhile, we ignore our own Constitution anywhere and any way we feel like it, because after all, you have a 4th Amendment right to freedom from unreasonable searches, but "this search isn't unreasonable" or "you voluntarily waived that right when you ____(fill in the blank with whatever activity you want)" or "it was necessary to catch the (pedophiles|terrorists|boogeyman-du-jour)."
Our word of the day, kids, is "Effing hypocrites."
Please excuse me for getting snippy with you, then. I've been arguing with a number of people commenting on this article who seem to think that "debate" means shouting "Huh-uh! Nyah, nyah, nyah," so I was getting a bit testy myself:)
It's worse than that, even. The area that I was talking about is populated by Yupiq, a tribe of Native Alaskans with their own language and culture. Yes, most of them speak English too, but it's a second language. Blithely saying, "Well, it's your own fault for living there." completely ignores the MASSIVE culture shock that comes from living in an isolated village with one or two hundred people, most of whom are related to you, to moving to somewhere on the road system where you don't know anyone, you are in a different culture and few, if any, of the people around you speak your primary language. Again, it's not impossible, but it is very, very difficult.
No, I just won't waste my time debating an issue with someone who ignores 99+% of what I said, and then says, "Thanks for conceding that the freedom to fly in and out of the villages...has not been impacted." Air taxi operators can shuttle you from one podunk village to another, but you aren't leaving rural Alaska without getting on an airliner (or spending a fortune hopping from one village to another until you reach either Fairbanks or Anchorage, where you are finally back on the road system...and still 5 days or more from the lower-48 by car.
I've been to some of these villages. Have you? Has Shavano? Do you understand what it takes to cross an 11,000 foot mountain range in a single-engine prop plane, 400 miles away from home, with your nearest fuel stop another 45 minutes behind you? Go to a map and look up Bethel. Look up Kotzebue. Look up Chevak. Then take a ruler and measure the *straight-line* distance between any one of those places and either Anchorage or Fairbanks. Then take that ruler and lay it on a map of the lower-48. Now imagine that some of the biggest mountains on the entire freaking continent are between you and your destination, and that there are very few places to stop and get gas if you ran into stronger-than-expected headwinds or if reroute due to weather. It's not impossible -- I've flown from Anchorage to Iliamna and Galena -- but it's not a trivial task, and it will cost considerably more than a ticket on Era Airlines to charter an air taxi flight. Meaning, no, Shavano isn't right. He's ignorant, at best, and what's worse, he's willfully remaining that way.
I suppose I could have been a little more clear. Yes, I have a Rotax powered airplane, and yes, I have flown it around Alaska. The Rotax is a cranky, temperamental POS, but only when I'm trying to start it. Once running, mine, at least, has never missed a beat. The second caveat is that my airplane has a pretty good glide ratio -- much, much better than the Cessnas that I learned to fly in. Finally, the farthest I have flown *my* airplane is to Talkeetna, about 65 N.M. north of Anchorage. That's about a 1.5 - 2 hour trip in a Cessna, but I logged over three hours in my airplane on that trip.
As for the unforgiving environment...it is unforgiving, but I don't want to exaggerate the danger. There are some places where, if you crash, you are going to be in a world of hurt. The Alaska Range and the Brooks Range are great examples, and you have to cross the Alaska Range to get to the villages on the west coast I mentioned earlier. Merrill Pass, one of the gateways from southcentral Alaska where I live to the west coast is literally peppered with airplane wreckage. I flew that pass once, but on a day when the ceilings were 11,000 feet. Most pilots who get into trouble there do so on days when the weather is iffy. The problem is, you have to make a blind corner to enter the pass, which is really narrow. If the weather's good where you are at, but bad in the pass, you've got nowhere to go but into the clouds, and that's bad news in a narrow, almost vertical-walled canyon.
In other words, the flying is great here when the weather is good, but the weather can change quickly in some areas, and mountain flying introduces even more risk to the equation. Consequently, private airplanes are a common way to travel in the state, but it is unreliable, and a lot of routes simply aren't feasible without airlines due to the overall distance or the distance between possible fuel stops along your route.
Slashdot Mirror
But they were right if you look at the true disparity in rich and poor. The poor in the rest of the world live in fricking dirt holes. The poorest in the USA live like the rich in many 3rd world countries.
There is indeed a huge disparity between the rich and the poor in the U.S. I've been on both sides of that situation (well...maybe not quite "rich", but I'm a very comfortable middle-class to upper middle-class right now). I've also been to some of the poorest parts of Alaska and to Guatemala. Quite honestly, I'd rather move to Guatemala than some of the places I've been in Alaska, and not just because the weather was nicer there :) Guatemala: running water and flush toilets, even if the toilet paper has to go in the trash can. Chevak, Alaska: no running water, and "honey buckets" (pro-tip -- it's not honey in there).
The gap between the worlds poor and rich is growing exponentially. right now the top 1% of the united states could buy real homes for 100% of the worlds poor and still be the top 1% rich. Yes it's that bad. And it will get worse.
How do you propose to solve that problem? This is something I have thought about quite a bit in my lifetime. Like I mentioned above, I don't have everything I want but I certainly have far more than I need. Meanwhile, there are people around the world who don't have enough to survive on. That bothers me. But the solution isn't as simple as, "give my excess to others." Sure, there are ways to help support others. My wife and I sponsor a girl who is the same age as our daughter (11) in Guatemala so that she can attend a private school and get a better education than she would otherwise. I've been to the school, and I've met the little girl (photos from the trip, although I didn't include my sponsor child, out of respect for her privacy). That's a start, but how do the rich in the western world feed the families who are starving in Ethiopia and Somalia? Do you remember "Blackhawk Down?" That movie was based upon the true story of what happens when well-intentioned westerners try to feed some of those poor in other parts of the world. The fact is that there are those who derive their power from the oppression of others. Consequently, "feeding the poor" often means removing their oppressors from power first so the food will actually get to the poor, rather than the local warlord. Are you willing to go to war so that sub-Saharan Africa can eat America and Europe's surplus? I won't argue that that might be one of the best reasons for taking up arms since the Revolutionary War, but you'd better understand what it would take to raise the third world up to first world standards and you'd also better be okay with overthrowing the local powers-that-be so you can build your idea of Utopia (*cough* "Iraq" *cough*).
It self perpetuates. The rich will not pay for things for the evil PARASITES to use. Walk to work you prole! a lot of things can be done to turn it all around. problem is it gives things to the poor, and that just can not be allowed to happen.
I don't want to pay for things so that those-who-can-but-won't can just sponge off of everyone else, no. I don't mind helping those who are simply down on their luck and need a hand getting back on their feet, however. "Give a man a fish...teach a man to fish..." And like I said above, it isn't really as simple as just giving my surplus to those in need. Making sure the surplus gets to those who truly need it is a big problem. If you can solve that problem, you'll be making a big difference in the world.
Do you have trees on your property? I imagine that the sun "strobing" through one of these would be much like the sun "strobing" through the branches of the tree right outside your living room window as the wind blows. IME, it's never been that much of a problem.
I'm actually trying to figure out what it would cost to put up a couple of (admittedly smaller) wind turbines on my property. Electricity and heating oil (I'm about a quarter mile past where the natural gas utility stops delivering service) are getting $$$ and since there's plenty of wind in my neighborhood, I am seriously considering supplementing my energy consumption with some wind turbines and/or solar power.
DISCLAIMER: IANAL, so this is not legal advice.
Having said that, I am rather interested in DIY drones, and therefore, I have been following technical and legal aspects of amateur drones/UAVs/UAS' for a couple of years. I don't see any *technical* reason why what you want to do isn't possible. However, if you live in the USA, I don't believe what you want to do is legal. As I understand, the FAA requires amateur operated drones to be under line-of-site control at all times. Here are some links to help you figure out the legal restrictions for what you want to do:
DIY Drones Regulatory FAQ
FAA Advisory Circular 91-57
Electronic Code of Federal Regulations
HTH!
What, exactly, does a bomb look like in the post 9/11 world? Because in the only two cases that I'm aware of where someone *actually* had a bomb on an airplane, one looked like a pair of underwear, and the other one looked like a shoe. Clearly, we should therefore ban all underwear and all shoes on airliners, right?
People are a wee bit more paranoid now.
That's the problem, though. I'm not saying you are wrong with what you say above, but in the last ten years, we've ramped up the paranoia to record levels. I suspect that if the U.S. *really* faced a credible terrorist threat* the fear alone would kill us all.
*like Israel faces daily now, or like Ireland, Italy or Germany did back when I was a kid in the '70s.
The contents of any business person's carry-on bag looks like that on an X-ray scanner. Phone, MP3 layer, USB cables, laptop and power brick, bent paper clip to reset dodgy devices, RSA security key for remote VPN access, prototype PCB for the embedded device my company is working on, etc. By the time that tangle of wires gets to the airport, it WILL look like a horrid science experiment that is a pound of C4 away from blowing up.
I had a lot of fun like that with TSA about four years ago.
I am an amateur musician, and I was travelling to a musician's conference halfway across the country...with my electric guitar, assorted effects pedals, a drum machine, a sequencer, a portable digital mixing board/digital recorder, enough cables and wall warts to connect everything together, and my laptop. I got to the security line, and TSA is droning on with their "please remove all laptops from your bags" spiel, so I removed the laptop but left everything else packed. They pretty much freaked out when they saw the collection of wires and electronic gadgets in the x-ray machine, but after I explained what I was carrying and placed each electronic gadget into one of their security-approved plastic bins, they calmed back down. I didn't leave my tangle on the airplane, though.
You're good. This is /. -- we don't respect IP rights here! :P
It's a little hard to find, but they mention it is surface level winds on the map.
At 30 feet off the ground, your anemometer is measuring a very localized wind direction, which, depending upon terrain, vegetation, etc., can be very different from your neighbor's wind direction 100 yards away. I have stood in my yard during wind storms and watched the trees on either side of my house blowing in different directions, due to wind being funneled in ravines near my house.
They didn't say in the wind map page (of if they did, I didn't see it), but I suspect they are taking an average wind speed and direction from a number of points. YMMV.
At home, I use RAIC: "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Computers" :)
/backups/`
/backups/${CLIENT}/yesterday
/backups/${CLIENT}/today /backups/${CLIENT}/yesterday
/proc etc., etc.,etc"
Okay, okay...that's really only *part* of the backup strategy. I also use a Time Machine with mine and my wife's Macs; my Linux machines used to backup to a separate hard drive using tar and gzip, but I haven't set that up again since we moved into our new house a year ago.
At work, we use a combination of rsync and ln, like so:
Backup Server Side:
#!/bin/bash
for CLIENT in `ls
do
rm -Rf
ln
done
Backup Client Side:
#!/bin/bash
EXCLUDES="/dev
HOSTNAME=`uname -n`
rsync -av --exclude ${EXCLUDES} / rsync://${BACKUP_SERVER}/${HOSTNAME}/today/
DIsclaimer: this is more pseudocode than actual code. We actually keep 90 days of backups at work, and dump the last day of the month to an external hard drive which is stored off-site, so it's a bit more complicated than I've suggested above. However, you should be able to get the general idea from what I've posted.
Supposedly, motion also works with IP cameras, but I haven't tried it. If so, then you can get away with the whole "1 usb cables' length from the camera" requirement. Since you don't want your video record to be stolen while the thief is in your house, you might consider using a virtual server on some hosting provider's service, but considering how much data motion captures, that might not fit the "cheap" aspect of the submitter's specifications.
Why not?
If no-one (except the police, and professional criminals who'll mostly use them in gang wars), everyone will be safer.
But if you have a gun, you'll feel safer, but make everyone else less safe (as a criminal may sell it). This is especially true if street criminals (who probably wouldn't have guns if they weren't so cheap on the blackmarket) don't have them.
I beg to disagree. It's trivial to lie with statistics, and I won't pretend that most (if not all) of the sites returned by Google aren't biased, but...:stats on gun ownership vs. violent crime.
My Mossberg has a pistol grip with a full stock (like an M-16) and a pistol grip on the pump. It's incredibly intuitive to aim and shoot. If I had to pick just one gun in my house to keep, it would definitely be the Mossberg.
You don't want to be like those pathetic police officers who shoot 80 rounds at a person (or cougar) at 15 yards and hit him twice.
That's the beauty of a shotgun -- it's like playing horseshoes. You don't have to be a marksman, you only have to be close enough.
I enjoy target shooting. I may not be a crack shot, but I am decent enough at close combat ranges with either my FS92 or my Super Blackhawk. However, the gun I keep in my bedroom is a Mossberg Mariner, for all the reasons you mention above (except for "getting off in court" since my shotgun will never be confused with a bird gun -- it looks evil). When the feces has collided with the impeller, I am much more confident of being able to stop an intruder with double-ought buckshot than with anything else.
"Willingly" is a pretty tough argument to make.
If I have to fly to a wedding or for business, I have no choice. Many destinations are reachable by air only, or would involve something like a 48 hour round trip drive.
Pfff...only 48 hours? It would take me at least twice that just to reach Seattle. Anything south or east of there is even more time. Not that I'm bitter about it or anything...
At roughly 43mpg on my motorcycle, and 9 miles from my house to the nearest Best Buy, I can guarantee you that I spend far, far less on gasoline ($1.05) than on shipping charges (at least $5 for USPS, an order of magnitude more for overnight and sometimes even 2nd day shipping). Of course, I live in Alaska, so 1) that only applies to the summer; in winter, driving my truck is slightly less one-sided ($3.22 for gas, if roads are clear, double that if roads are bad); and 2) shipping costs are outrageous compared to lower-48 costs. Also, Best Buy is on my route home, so if I stop by on my way home from work, that makes gas costs even less of an issue.
Let me see if I understand this...we are going to pass a law preventing U.S. companies from complying with the laws of other sovereign nations with whom they do business, if we feel that those nations are being oppressive to their people. Meanwhile, we ignore our own Constitution anywhere and any way we feel like it, because after all, you have a 4th Amendment right to freedom from unreasonable searches, but "this search isn't unreasonable" or "you voluntarily waived that right when you ____(fill in the blank with whatever activity you want)" or "it was necessary to catch the (pedophiles|terrorists|boogeyman-du-jour)."
Our word of the day, kids, is "Effing hypocrites."
LOL.
:)
Please excuse me for getting snippy with you, then. I've been arguing with a number of people commenting on this article who seem to think that "debate" means shouting "Huh-uh! Nyah, nyah, nyah," so I was getting a bit testy myself
I've never been to Kake, so I couldn't tell you. TSA is in Bethel, though (but not an AIT scanner...yet).
Well said!
It's worse than that, even. The area that I was talking about is populated by Yupiq, a tribe of Native Alaskans with their own language and culture. Yes, most of them speak English too, but it's a second language. Blithely saying, "Well, it's your own fault for living there." completely ignores the MASSIVE culture shock that comes from living in an isolated village with one or two hundred people, most of whom are related to you, to moving to somewhere on the road system where you don't know anyone, you are in a different culture and few, if any, of the people around you speak your primary language. Again, it's not impossible, but it is very, very difficult.
No, I just won't waste my time debating an issue with someone who ignores 99+% of what I said, and then says, "Thanks for conceding that the freedom to fly in and out of the villages...has not been impacted." Air taxi operators can shuttle you from one podunk village to another, but you aren't leaving rural Alaska without getting on an airliner (or spending a fortune hopping from one village to another until you reach either Fairbanks or Anchorage, where you are finally back on the road system...and still 5 days or more from the lower-48 by car.
I've been to some of these villages. Have you? Has Shavano? Do you understand what it takes to cross an 11,000 foot mountain range in a single-engine prop plane, 400 miles away from home, with your nearest fuel stop another 45 minutes behind you? Go to a map and look up Bethel. Look up Kotzebue. Look up Chevak. Then take a ruler and measure the *straight-line* distance between any one of those places and either Anchorage or Fairbanks. Then take that ruler and lay it on a map of the lower-48. Now imagine that some of the biggest mountains on the entire freaking continent are between you and your destination, and that there are very few places to stop and get gas if you ran into stronger-than-expected headwinds or if reroute due to weather. It's not impossible -- I've flown from Anchorage to Iliamna and Galena -- but it's not a trivial task, and it will cost considerably more than a ticket on Era Airlines to charter an air taxi flight. Meaning, no, Shavano isn't right. He's ignorant, at best, and what's worse, he's willfully remaining that way.
ROFL. You might want to browse my comment history before calling me a leftist.
I suppose I could have been a little more clear. Yes, I have a Rotax powered airplane, and yes, I have flown it around Alaska. The Rotax is a cranky, temperamental POS, but only when I'm trying to start it. Once running, mine, at least, has never missed a beat. The second caveat is that my airplane has a pretty good glide ratio -- much, much better than the Cessnas that I learned to fly in. Finally, the farthest I have flown *my* airplane is to Talkeetna, about 65 N.M. north of Anchorage. That's about a 1.5 - 2 hour trip in a Cessna, but I logged over three hours in my airplane on that trip.
As for the unforgiving environment...it is unforgiving, but I don't want to exaggerate the danger. There are some places where, if you crash, you are going to be in a world of hurt. The Alaska Range and the Brooks Range are great examples, and you have to cross the Alaska Range to get to the villages on the west coast I mentioned earlier. Merrill Pass, one of the gateways from southcentral Alaska where I live to the west coast is literally peppered with airplane wreckage. I flew that pass once, but on a day when the ceilings were 11,000 feet. Most pilots who get into trouble there do so on days when the weather is iffy. The problem is, you have to make a blind corner to enter the pass, which is really narrow. If the weather's good where you are at, but bad in the pass, you've got nowhere to go but into the clouds, and that's bad news in a narrow, almost vertical-walled canyon.
In other words, the flying is great here when the weather is good, but the weather can change quickly in some areas, and mountain flying introduces even more risk to the equation. Consequently, private airplanes are a common way to travel in the state, but it is unreliable, and a lot of routes simply aren't feasible without airlines due to the overall distance or the distance between possible fuel stops along your route.
I'll have to visit that site; I had not heard of it until today.