UNALASKA, AK -- When I agreed to blog here for a week I gave a quick word of warning: I was set to spend a week in Dutch Harbor, the remote fishing town made globally famous by 1) the series "Deadliest Catch" and 2) fish.

"Remote" is a word we like to misuse, like "awesome" or "ironic" or "electable." You go to a hunting cabin in West Virginia and you say you're in a remote location. But I am about as far from the great mass of humanity as I could be right now. This is obvious if you open a map and notice that the island is closer to Pyongyang than it is to Seattle. The trip out here made this more obvious. Fly into Anchorage's Ted Stevens International Airport (yes, still) and you don't immediately see the listing for your Dutch Harbor connecting flight. This is because you need to walk out of the main airport and into a few rooms located next to the airfield upon which 737s wait for clearance to fly.