A week of calamity in landscapes reads! Did microbes cause the largest mass extinction in earth’s history? Why is California sinking? What did we learn from the biggest earthquake in America fifty years ago? And, closer to home, how dangerous should a playground be?
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At 5:42 a.m. on March 27, 1964, a 9.2-magnitude earthquake erupted 78 miles east of Anchorage, Alaska. The earthquake remains the most powerful earthquake to strike North America, and the second-largest earthquake ever measured.
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A thousand feet off the ground, the wind blows brisk and uninterrupted. But how do you build such a tall, thin beam to support a turbine’s blades? You don’t—you float the generator in a giant helium balloon. The world’s first floating commercial wind turbine will soon be hovering over Fairbanks, Alaska.
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Advantageous hunters in Alaska have one less advantage after the state’s Board of Game approved a measure that prohibits the use of drones to spot animals. Now they’ll just have to rely on their special camouflage clothing, high-powered rifles, and high-powered handheld cameras to kill unsuspecting beasts.
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This sequence feels computer generated but it was shot in Alaska using a GoPro HERO3+ on the DJI Phantom quadrotor helicopter. It feels like a tiny ice tunnel until you notice the two guys standing inside and you realize that this hole is huge. The entire video is beautiful.
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Alaska has a trash problem. As you probably noticed in the aftermath of the Japanese Earthquake, America’s northernmost state happens to be the dumping grounds for all the garbage the Pacific Ocean doesn’t want. Now, an industrious artist is drawing attention to the problem.
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Beijing’s smog, the West’s drought, Alaska’s avalanche, and everybody’s cigarettes are part of this week’s landscape reads.
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An absolutely fascinating but little-known story—described as a "forgotten theater" by the U.S. Navy itself—is the tale of Kiska and Attu, Alaska: two remote Aleutian islands where the Japanese military established a submarine base during World War II.
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With clear skies and rising temperatures around the country, the summer travel season is nearly upon us. And unless you’ve got money to burn or a first-born to offer, now’s the time to book your travel plans. Here’s how to get away without breaking the bank. More »
Don’t worry about Cricket hogging the spotlight during the second wave of the iPhone 5’s US launch. C Spire, Appalachian Wireless and Alaska’s GCI have also promised to carry Apple’s taller smartphone on the same September 28th date. Details of the arrival will have to wait, although they’re not likely to veer sharply from the prices and rates that carriers were setting back in the iPhone 4S days. There are a few gaps in the narrative versus the earlier releases: we have yet to see news from GCI’s Alaskan neighbors as well as Cellcom or nTelos, for example. The plan is nonetheless a sign that Apple wants to blanket the American landscape with new iPhones as quickly as possible.
[Thanks, Colby]
Update: Not surprisingly, nTelos has also confirmed (PDF) that it’s hopping aboard the September 28th iPhone 5 train.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
C Spire, regional carriers join the iPhone 5 deluge on September 28th originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Sep 2012 10:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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