1. Alaska has a longer coastline than all the other U.S. states combined.With the extension of the Aleutian Islands into the eastern hemisphere, it is technically both the westernmost and easternmost state in the United States, as well as also being the northernmost.
2. Mount Shishaldin [an occasionally smoldering volcano that rises to 10,000 feet (3,000 m) above the North Pacific] is the most perfect volcanic cone on Earth, even more symmetrical than Japan’s Mount Fuji
3. Alaska is tied with Hawaii as the state with the lowest high temperature in the United States [100 degrees, recorded 8 miles inside the arctic circle in 1915]
4. At the height of Russian America [i.e., pre-Alaska Purchase by the US], the Russian population reached 700.
5. The oil and gas industry dominates the Alaskan economy, with more than 80% of the state’s revenues derived from petroleum extraction
6. The state capital, Juneau, is not accessible by road, only a car ferry
7. In 2009 there were 6,000 Jews in Alaska (for whom observance of the mitzvah may pose special problems)…In 2010, the local Muslim community broke ground on the first mosque in the state

This is unbelievably cool.  This guy has persisted in finding ways to move extremely heavy items using only primitive tools.  He’s approaching the point where given time he can assemble something like  Stonehenge – not only without cranes but nearly unassisted by other people!  Very inspirational.

The original website is here.

Before the game, Battier was given his special package of information. “He’s the only player we give it to,” Morey says. “We can give him this fire hose of data and let him sift. Most players are like golfers. You don’t want them swinging while they’re thinking.” The data essentially broke down the floor into many discrete zones and calculated the odds of Bryant making shots from different places on the court, under different degrees of defensive pressure, in different relationships to other players — how well he scored off screens, off pick-and-rolls, off catch-and-shoots and so on. Battier learns a lot from studying the data on the superstars he is usually assigned to guard. For instance, the numbers show him that Allen Iverson is one of the most efficient scorers in the N.B.A. when he goes to his right; when he goes to his left he kills his team…

Battier says. “My job is not to keep him from scoring points but to make him as inefficient as possible.” The court doesn’t have little squares all over it to tell him what percentage Bryant is likely to shoot from any given spot, but it might as well…if you knew none of this, you would never guess any of it from watching the game. Bryant was quicker than Battier, so the latter spent much of his time chasing around after him, Keystone Cops-like… [but] when he decides where to be on the court and what angles to take, he is constantly reminding himself of the odds on the stack of papers he read through an hour earlier as his feet soaked in the whirlpool. “The numbers either refute my thinking or support my thinking,” he says, “and when there’s any question, I trust the numbers. The numbers don’t lie.” Even when the numbers agree with his intuitions, they have an effect. “It’s a subtle difference,” Morey says, “but it has big implications. If you have an intuition of something but no hard evidence to back it up, you might kind of sort of go about putting that intuition into practice, because there’s still some uncertainty if it’s right or wrong.”

Knowing the odds, Battier can pursue an inherently uncertain strategy with total certainty. He can devote himself to a process and disregard the outcome of any given encounter.

[emphasis mine]

Perhaps not surprisingly, the VP of Basketball Operations for the Rockets is a former management consultant  (and coincidentally a classmate from OU).

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