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Yesterday my wife wrote to me at work that the plane carrying our aquaintance/friend Dr. Gordon Haber was missing, yesterday evening the wreckage was found on a mountain side and human remains were seen by troopers. This morning The pilot was found alive, Gordon was dead.

We met Gordon our first winter in Juneau AK when he gave a lecture on the plight of Alaskan wolves. We sporadically traded correspondence with him after Trish interviewed him for the paper.

Gordon has studied the wolf packs of Denali National Park over 45 years. He was outspoken against Alaska allowing aerial hunting of wolves as well as Bounties on wolf skins. He began studying under a researcher named Adolph who began observing the wolves in the 1930’s, then Gordon took over his research. That combined research of the wolf packs of Denali entail the longest unbroken study of wild animals in the world. He watched the once proud wolf packs decimated. One of the oldest and largest wolf packs in Denali was cut down by hunters waiting on the border of the park for the wolves to travel through… animals do not understand human borders. Last we heard that wolf pack consisted of three young wolves. By young I mean of an age where they had not yet been taught the art of hunting from the adults. Unable to hunt large animals they were surviving off rabbits as their territory was absorbed by neighboring packs.

Gordon among others fought Alaska’s laws allowing aerial wolf “hunting”. He was also an outspoken critic of Sarah Palin.

“On wildlife-related issues, whether it is polar bears or predator controls, she has shown no inclination to be objective. I cannot find credible scientific data to support their arguments,” he added about the state’s rationale for gunning down wolves. “In most cases, there is evidence to the contrary.” He further argued that Alaska’s reported numbers are wildly inflated. “Sixty to 70 percent of the moose they eat are scavenged, not killed” he would say.

He told us stories about the wolves, one which touched us most was about an Alpha Wolf who’s mate was caught in a snare… he stayed by her as she bled trying to escape and finally died of thirst. He stayed with her when the trapper came days later and dragged her body away behind his snowmobile. He howled through the nights and never really returned to the pack… taking little interest in what was happening as other males began to take over. He finally walked away and did not come back for months, long after a new leader had taken control. He stayed a short time before walking away one last time to never be seen again. How is that for the “Killer wolf” image? No healthy wolf has attacked a human in well over 100 years unless “They poked him in the eye with a stick” as one author put it. Haber’s studies prove that the old stories and fears of wolves are untrue. Wolves are scavengers and rarely attacked Moose or Caribou, the possibility of injury was to high and an injured wolf cannot hunt for food. The wolves of Denali or wild wolves in the far reaches of Alaska and Canada are no threat to those natives who still live off hunting moose and Caribou.

Trapper kills last wolf in Denali’s Sanctuary pack

So now we mourn for not only a man we considered a friend and held in great respect for his dedication to spending much of his life humping the boonies and existing in the wild to be close to the wolves he so loved, but we must mourn the wolves who have lost the loudest voice for their continued survival and protection. Trish and I fear that this may be twilight for the wolves of Denali who are so regularly killed by trappers on the fringe (Two Denali Park wolves snared outside park) and legal aerial hunting by the Dept. of Fish & Game and the Board of Game who Sarah Palin appointed and then gave control of predator control.

Gordon will be missed. Thank you for what you did…

Alaska Dispatch

Alaska wolves: Basic and applied research by Gordon Haber, Ph.D.

Wolf-Control Programs Carried Out Under the Guise of ‘Science

NOTE: I believe this originally was posted on the Iditarod web site (I was not able to find it or the author when I looked). This is make believe, Mackey’s lead dog is Larry who is now retiring, Macky in fact just won the Iditarod for the third time. If they air this years Iditarod as “Ititarod: The Last Great Race” (Discovery Channel I think) I suggest you watch it, the last airing of the 2008 Iditarod was quite interesting and really shows what goes into it, not as easy as it looks. Take it easy Larry…

The W3C are known for being vague, often due to trying to please everyone. This vagueness has caused issues in the past as developers understood the specs differently, a good example is IE’s showing of the alt attribute as a tooltip and all others browsers understanding it to be only visible when the image is not.

I have seen references before to the <address> tag and like all beginners did not look into it as it is clear isn’t it? You use it to create addresses. Well this is the web and the W3C and not everything is what it seems.

Here are two authorities on the subject:

[quote cite=” http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/global.html#edef-ADDRESS”] The ADDRESS element may be used by authors to supply contact information for a document or a major part of a document such as a form. This element often appears at the beginning or end of a document. – W3C[/quote]

[quote cite=” http://www.w3schools.com/TAGS/tag_address.asp”] The <address> tag defines contact information for a document or a section.

Note: The <address> tag should NOT be used as describing a postal address, unless it is a part of the contact information. – W3Schools.com[/quote]

For me this is fairly clear, but not what I thought as a beginner. The address tag is not for addresses, it is for contact information about the author. If I post this in an ezine for instance, the author information about me with my email and or URL would be the address. I am the contact person and not the newsletter that posts this. KillerSites is not the contact when I post it on their forum. If you have questions, you contact me.

So if you use it for a street or postal address you are clearly wrong.

Or are you?

In a comment section at a SimpleBits’ SimpleQuiz from 2004 (http://www.simplebits.com/notebook/2004/08/04/sq.html), some very good comments are to be found (126 in all, but good reading). It became and issue of how best to markup physical addresses and rather than people saying A, B, C or D, may began tweaking the offered solutions.

Comments here are long closed, I was dismayed that it took almost half the comments before someone pointed out the semantics of Address as many were stating simply “A is correct because that is what the tag is there for.” Well no, no it isn’t, read the specs. It is the contact information on the author. So name, email, URL and such.

Some posters blatantly ignore this but towards the bottom more and more reference it and some begin to point out other ways of seeing it than what I know to be the meaning of Address.

Now the easy to understand has become vague indeed. Let us look again, this time with my highlights:

[quote cite=” http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/global.html#edef-ADDRESS”] The ADDRESS element may be used by authors to supply contact information for a document or a major part of a document such as a form. This element often appears at the beginning or end of a document. – W3C[/quote]

Are you seeing what I missed and others saw?

Once again by generously using their favorite word, “may,” the W3C’s use of it opens the definition to be used and abused in many ways aside from it’s intended use.

Also look at it from a corporate point of view. We looked earlier at me as the author. Now let’s say it is a page on a corporate web site. Who is the “contact information for a document or a major part of a document?”

It depends, but it would be either a division or department or the corporation as a whole. So if I have a question or issue with the content who is my contact person? Likely the Public Affairs people for the corporation. How would I contact them? URL and email of course as before, but I may wish to send a letter. Now suddenly a postal address or street address I can visit to speak to someone in person is now fitting snuggly in the definition, especially with that “may” thrown in. A local part of a nationwide chain would not be the owner so the corporate headquarters would be the owner.

Personally, I find that stretching it as this tag is really meant to be directly on each page. So I do not agree with the full address use of the tag, To use it on one page to represent ownership and responsibility for an entire site is not in the spec. The spec clearly states it is “for a document or a major part of a document,” meaning singular, as under this theory you need to place the physical address of the company on every page. But I must admit that I can not hotly dispute it because in theory, even stretched theory they are partly right at least and you can liken a web site to a document, like a brochure of many pages.

Another repeated argument is that telephone numbers should not be included, they are not part of the address (usually meaning physical address), but they are however “contact information for a document or a major part of a document” and by that definition better candidates for the address tag than a complete physical or postal address.

So the <address> tag turns out to be not so simple after all. Like a Mirror you identify way off, when you take a closer look it is a funhouse mirror and depending on what angle you look at the specs for address… it means different things to different people and warps to be seen however you wish to use it like a funhouse mirror warping your reflection depending on the angle you see it. With W3C specs, things are not always what they seem.