SEALs getting geared up outside the "Vanity Suite" on the set of Act of Valor.

Websites from Coca-Cola, Acura and film Act of Valor crashed Sunday night after being overwhelmed by Super Bowl ad-driven traffic.... Coke’s site was down long enough for the company to put up a maintenance page. ActofValor.com, meanwhile, experienced at least six outages of five minutes. That site was also five times slower than average during the big game.

Web outages aside, the ads seem to be generating a positive response, in spite of the fact that there seemed to be several dozen action film ads during the game.

For more info on the film, check out the Act of Valor site, as well as my article about the film in Businessweek. 

(Also: Giants!) 

Director/Producer Mike "Mouse" McCoy (foreground) and uniformed Navy SEALs (background).

At long last, my article on the upcoming film Act of Valor, an action movie starring active-duty Navy SEALs in the lead roles, has gone to press. It's leading the Etc. section of the February 6-12 issue of Businessweek and can be read online here. The film, set to open in theaters nationwide on February 24th, represents a unique partnership between the Navy and the filmmakers.

It's been a long road for filmmakers Scott Waugh and Mike "Mouse" McCoy: they'd already been working on the film for a year and a half when I visited them on set in November 2009 to watch the filming of several scenes . But the end result is pretty unique, and I'm grateful to have had the chance to spend time with the directors and the SEALs in the film, and happy to be able to tell a small part of their story.

I'll be posting more info and interviews that didn't make it into the piece, either here or elsewhere, so check back soon. In the mean time, check out my flickr set from behind the scenes on the set of Act of Valor.

And keep an eye out for their Super Bowl ad this weekend. Go Giants!

Scientists plotting work on the Pebble site.

The Pebble Environmental Baseline Document (EBD) characterizes the existing physical, biological and social environments in study areas within the Bristol Bay and Cook Inlet regions.  The EBD represents one of the most comprehensive environmental study programs ever undertaken for a natural resource project in Alaska.

Comprehensive, indeed: the EBD runs to more than 20,000 pages and 53 chapters. Plus appendices! Luckily, there's a summary, and for those who'd rather not read, videos of the presentations that Pebble has been giving to various state agencies over the past week will be available online within the next couple weeks at Pebble's main site.

This may appease some of Pebble's critics, who have long clamored for the Partnership to release the results of its scientific studies, but for most, the EBD won't change anything, no matter what it says. In addition to its unwieldy length, which some see as a tactic in itself--"They're just going to release it all at once and bury us in data," one mine opponent told me in October--there is also the problem of the timeframe: the first drilling exploration of the Pebble site was in 1988, and the current round of exploration got underway in 2002. Thus, it's hard to argue that 2004-2008 represents an ecological "baseline" for the region.

More on this as it develops, of course.

(For more info, listen to the KDLG story here.)

Combat-ready SEALs inside an airplane while filming the upcoming movie "Act of Valor."

On Wednesday, the Navy SEALs rescued two aid workers--one American and one Danish--who had been held hostage by Somali pirates for three months. As the New York Times reports, the pirates had refused a $1.5 million ransom and the health of American captive Jessica Buchanan was deteriorating, necessitating immediate action.  The mission reportedly involved about two dozen SEALs, inserted by helicopter, and left nine Somali gunmen dead.

The rescue has also refocused attention on the putatively secret unit known as SEAL Team 6, which was also involved in the killing of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottobad, Pakistan, in May of last year. Since the Bin Laden mission, the Navy has attempted to keep the SEALs out of the limelight--the attention made many in the Naval Special Warfare (NSW) community uncomfortable, both as a contravention of their "quiet warrior" ethic and for the possible risks it posed to operational security.  

All that being said, the SEALs will be in for a lot more attention shortly: an action movie, titled Act of Valor, filmed with the Navy's cooperation, and featuring active-duty SEALs in many of the lead roles, will hit theaters nation-wide on February 24th. I had the privilege of being on the set while they were filming it, so watch this space for more updates on the film and for information on my article about it, to be published in Businessweek February 3rd.

Running for the tram, Zagreb, Croatia (2005)

the electoral commission announced that 67 percent had voted in favor of joining the bloc, with about 33 percent against. The result confounded recent surveys suggesting that the referendum would be very close. But an approximate turnout of 45 percent suggests that only three in ten Croatian voters are enthusiastic enough about EU membership to have gone to the polling stations to express their support.

In the lead-up to the vote, there were anti-EU protests in Zagreb (one of which turned violent), and no shortage of grumbling. But overall, as the vote shows, Croatians still see EU membership as their best path forward, for reasons that go beyond the economic and the political to the symbolic: for many Croatians, EU accession represents closure on the Yugoslav era and the conflict years that followed.

And Croatian ambivalence towards the idea of EU accession is nothing new. When I was traveling through the country in 2005, reporting a story for Outside ("Balkan Surprise"), I heard anti-EU grumbling from war veterans who worried that EU membership might threaten Croatia's recently attained sovreignty; from fishermen concerned about intrusions into their coastal waters by fishermen from other EU nations; and from olive farmers worried that their lack of clear land titles might jeoparidize their farms. Re-reading my article now, it strikes me that I was much younger then, and so were Croatia and the European Union. These were valid concerns when the EU was stronger, and they're even more so now. It will be interesting to watch how Croatia's road to accession works out.

"85-year-old woman wields shovel to stop moose stomping."

But it leaves out one important detail: 85-year-old Dorothea Taylor's shovel-swinging likely saved the life of her 82-year-old husband George Murphy. Here's the slightly longer description: "An agitated moose ran down and stomped a well-known Bush pilot from Willow, but he was saved when his wife grabbed a shovel from their pickup truck and whacked the big animal until it backed off."

Equally impressive? Their compassion for the offending moose. Per the ADN:

It might just have been stressed from an especially harsh winter, with extreme cold temperatures and heavy snow.

"They don't actually have a heckuva lot to eat," Murphy said.

"And they don't have enough stamina," Taylor said.

"They're just at the end of their rope," Murphy said. "They'll just strike out at anything."

He is not upset with the moose. Neither is his wife. They don't want anyone to try to kill it. No one could be sure they got the right one, anyway.

 Yup.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/01/22/2277726/wife-stops-moose-stomping-with.html#storylink=cpy

An agitated moose ran down and stomped a well-known Bush pilot from Willow, but he was saved when his wife grabbed a shovel from their pickup truck and whacked the big animal until it backed off.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/01/22/2277726/wife-stops-moose-stomping-with.html#storylink=cpyAn agitated moose ran down and stomped a well-known Bush pilot from Willow, but he was saved when his wife grabbed a shovel from their pickup truck and whacked the big animal until it backed off.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/01/22/2277726/wife-stops-moose-stomping-with.html#storylink=cpy

To prepare for 2012, I spent a few days of the week between Christmas and New Year's backpacking in New York's Harriman State Park, spending one night in the Tom Jones Shelter, above, where a very persistent raccoon made for a fitful night's sleep. But overall, a great little trip--it's always fun to stay in these old lean-to's in Harriman, which are usually empty this time of year, and there's nothing like a good solo trip to clear the head before the start of a new year.

Happy New Year. See a few more Harriman photos here.

This is a short video I put together showing the "behind the scenes" action as photographer Corey Arnold rallied a group of commercial fishermen for a group photo on July 12, 2011. The fishermen in question are all part of the summer community at Graveyard Point, at the mouth of the Kvichak River in Bristol Bay, Alaska, where Corey and I have also fished for the past three summers. The photo graced the back cover of the December 2011 issue of Alaska magazine as part of an ad campaign opposing the proposed Pebble Mine. Read more about it over on Corey's blog.

If you look really closely at the final photo, below, you might be able to make out Corey and me in the middle of that scrum of raingear-clad fishermen.

For those of us who spend too much time imagining the perfect woodsy retreat, architect Harris Armstrong's "Rockpile" cabin in DeSoto, Missouri, calls out with its alluring mix of simplicity and whimsy. Armstrong, a St. Louis architect active from the 1930s through the 1960s, was an influential Midwestern modernist. According to architect Mark Raimist, who wrote a book about Armstrong's work,

"The upper level contained a large fireplace and beds. The lower level (sometimes prone to flooding) contained a very basic kitchen. Armstrong built it himself during World War II, when there wasn't much construction acitivity. Unfortunately, it burned down in 1972, just one year before Armstrong's death."

For more photos of Armstrong's work, check out Raimist's excellent Flickr set. For more fuel to stoke the cabin/retreat daydreams, check out the addictive site The Modern Cabin.

Finding Oregon from Uncage the Soul Productions on Vimeo.

My hope is that the vicarious thrill of this video will be enough Oregon for most people--we don't want it getting crowded out there.