Here is the crux of it: Rosetta Stone is more concerned about preventing software piracy than they are about existing customer satisfaction. These things always come from the top down. Some big important MBA has a spreadsheet which tells him how much richer he could be if their software wasn’t pirated. So they spend a ton of money and create all sorts of processes to prevent piracy. That alone would be fine – I am anti-software-piracy for the most part.

But what has happened psychologically at Rosetta Stone is that everyone, including good, loyal paying customers, is viewed through this lens of suspicion. The focus is not on making sure customers are happy, it’s on making sure they are not pirates. The goal is not to make sure customers get what they want, it’s on making sure Rosetta Stone gets what it wants.

This is completely backwards. It’s a cancer in an organization. You can never put a corporate goal above the goals of your customers. Without your customers there is no corporation.

I’ve tweeted many times about how much I like Rosetta Stone. Now I am tweeting about how much I hate Rosetta Stone the company. That is a colossal failure of management and a sign, frankly, of a company in decline.

UPDATE: Someone at Rosetta Stone came through, solved my problem and took responsibility for the runaround I had been getting. They even said they read this blog post! I can’t say how or if Rosetta Stone will address the big picture ideas I mention above, but they did, in the end, make sure I was happy and I appreciate that a lot.

We all like sex. Our culture is permeated with sex. And yet we never talk about sex in a real way. We joke about it and we might share a few details with our best friend. But we never really talk about it. It’s off the table. I wonder why that is. How often do you and your partner have sex? What’s your approach to masturbation? Do you like oral sex? Do you swallow? Anal? Do you like to dress up? Or role play? Do you trim or shave your privates? What’s your favorite position(s)? How about a play-by-play of the last really great sex you’ve had?

All of these topics are off limits. We can all answer those questions. There are interesting thoughts that are associated with those sorts of topics. We could learn from each other, learn about each other and understand better this very weird overlay of sexuality that is a major part of the human story.

Some of you maybe think I’m some sort of a perv already because I broach these topics. Even though most of us are sexually active people, admitting that you take an interest in sex can be perceived negatively. In the wrong context, talking about even the most normal sexual acts can get you fired or sued.

Why is this?

I think there are interesting sexual topics that are under-discussed because of this weird disconnect. I’m not just talking about the sorts of preferential questions I mentioned above. Sex is deeply hardwired into our conscious and unconscious behavior and it is fascinating. But please don’t talk about it.

This is a hilarious act of denial. Their site was virtually unavailable during the sale. I was not able to accomplish a single thing at any point over the course of 90 minutes. Further, they encouraged people to put things in their shopping basket the night before but then they cleared all of those shopping baskets right before the sale. If you look at the twittersphere, for every happy person there is probably 10-50 unhappy people. sparkfun’s technical inability to keep up with interest turned what could have been a great promotion into a PR disaster.

And they congratulated themselves for it. They congratulated their IT department for it. Their system didn’t work for 99% of visitors and they are happy with that.

It’s fucking bizarre.

Let me add — I know how hard it is to scale for massive concurrency on a site. Sometimes surprises happen or weaknesses are revealed in big web operations. I’m forgiving of that. I’m not forgiving of bad planning or shoddy execution.

The bottom line: sparkfun achieved their goals. Customers did not. That is backwards.

Chapter 1 – Childhood
My mother tells me this story about my birth. My dad was running a grain elevator at Pleasant Lake near Rugby, North Dakota. My mother cooked for the men that worked there. We lived in a house with a dirt floor. The rooms were divided by curtains. I was the fourth child. (Ed was 8, Mary was 6, and Katherine was 3.) Mom knew I was about to be born; she called to my father to come home and put up the heater. It was a cold and stormy day, November 12, 1915. The doctor’s name was Fisher. My mother was a midwife and delivered all the babies in every community, but when she had a baby she called a doctor. We were all born at home.
My first memory is when we lived on a place called Jerusalem. It was located on the Fort Totten Indian Reservation. It was a beautiful house on a hill; there were trees to the west and south. We picked June berries, choke cherries, goose berries, and wild plums. Devils Lake was west of the house; we used to swim there. It was a salty lake so it was easy to stay afloat on it.
My cousin, Alfred Hultgrin, came to stay with us because he was having trouble in school. Mom worked with him every night. He had to do his work before he could go out to play. The school was only one half mile away, a little east and north. The folks left this place because the land was so poor that they couldn’t make a living. They moved from there to the Swank farm near Hamar. This is where Ann was born.
I remember one time all the relatives were gathered together on a Sunday afternoon. This was an occasion many times a year. Walter, Mom’s brother, and Mabel, his wife, had five kids. Uncle Emil and Aunt Annie, mom’s sister, had eight kids. We had seven. We had been playing and Alfred had been teasing me. I always hated to be teased. Someone came out with a camera to take our picture. I didn’t want to be in it, but I had no choice. We were told to stand on the running board of the car. I was crying and put my arm over my face. We have that picture. I was very stubborn and had refused to be in it. Yet, in spite of my stubbornness, I guess I wanted to be in the picture, so I covered my face to conceal the tears.
I remember one time my mother had fixed the dinner buckets for the kids going to school. She used to make large white sour cream cookies. I sat watching her and asked for a cookie. She said there was only enough for the kids’ dinner buckets. Later in the evening I got into one of the pails and took a cookie. I crawled under a cot we had in the living room to eat it. It was discovered what I had done. I was pulled out by the leg and received a whopping good spanking. But, I remember the taste of that cookie; as a kid, I would say it was worth it.
I had looked forward to starting school. I loved watching the others do their homework. We loaded ourselves into the buggy and drove to the school two miles away. This school was west of our place on a very bad road. We drove on this road last year when Katherine was here and it is still a poor country road. The name of the school was Minco # 1. As we arrived at the school, someone came out and asked me if Ed was my brother or my cousin. I said, “My cousin.” Everyone laughed. I was so embarrassed that I refused to go into the school. I sat all day under the buggy. Miss Boyle was the teacher. My mom gave me a good talking to that night. From then on I loved school.
I was nine years old. We had all had the mumps. Ed had them so bad he almost died. My mother was pregnant and also had the mumps. The baby, Margaret, was born. Everything was fine until she was nine days old. She was born December 14 and died December 23. My mother was so sick. We had returned to school and came home this day to find the doctor there. My dad was holding the baby and crying. We all took turns holding Margaret and crying. She died that day. The funeral was Christmas Eve. There was no embalming in those days. The priest was angry because he had to come to Tolna on a stormy day. He lived in Lakota. He took it out on my dad. We were all heartsick. They decided we would not go to church in Tolna until that priest was removed. We joined the parish in Warwick. That is the reason Ann and I made our First Communion at the Mission in Fort Totten. We stayed there and studied for a week.
We had another baby two years later. He was born November 19. We were all looking forward to this baby because Margaret had died. We all came rushing downstairs in the morning to see baby Robert. They said the doctor had trouble in the process and the baby’s neck had been broken. How we cried. He was laid out in a box in the north bedroom. I can still remember how cute he looked.
My mother had a girl helping us by the name of Rose Wilhelm. Every night she stole my pillow. I disliked her as long as I can remember.
I attended country school for eight years. We walked spring and fall. We usually went barefoot and so did everyone else. Later, when the field work was done, we could use horses and go in the buggy until freeze up and later went in a covered-in sleigh. When the grass in the pasture was gone, I rode horseback to school and took the cattle with me. I would watch from a school window and go out and turn them around. After school I would take them home with me. We took our lunch and all ate out in the woods at noon. There was a large grove of trees east and south of the school. As we walked, we would run our legs off to get away from neighborhood bulls.
Another thing that frightened us was the gypsies. They came through, spring and fall, in their big white wagons. When we saw them coming, we would run home as fast as we could. They would take chickens, ducks, and anything else they could find. We were also told to never ride with strangers. Because of these things, we were fast runners at County Play Day. I won first prize for many years in the 100 yard dash and later won the races in the Eddy County Play Day.
Everyone took part in declamation and spelling contest. Two years in a row in seventh and eighth grades I attended the county spelling contest. I won first in the county and took part in the state contest. That was a thrill, my first big trip. The county superintendent took me; we attended the State Fair. I won sixth in the state. I went down on the word “dying”. I spelled the wrong one. I forgot to ask the pronouncer to give the definition. This was in Grand Forks in 1930.
There were always eight grades in school. The teacher combined 3 & 4, 5 & 6, and 7 & 8. There were usually from 30 to 40 kids in the school.
I played the pump organ for the students to march in, in the morning, and out, in the evening. I can still play the march that I played then. My brother, Bud, was very good on the guitar and won first place in a music contest.
We had one teacher, Roberta Hoffman, who taught us many folk dances. Some of them were Sailor’s Horn Pipe, Irish Jig, and the Minuet. We had costumes for each of these. I have a picture of myself in a minuet costume.
One time we had a run away with the covered-in sleigh. Ann sat in the doorway and wouldn’t jump. I ran behind screaming at her. In time the sleigh hit a telephone pole and the horses had to stop. She cried and cried.
We always had a Christmas program. The teacher used sheets for curtains. We also had a last day of school picnic. We had a big program. Then we always did the May Pole Dance. We had costumes and colored ribbons. There was always free ice cream bought by the School Board. At this program, I played the Hawaiian or steel guitar. If it rained on that last day there were many sad kids.
We graduated with the whole county at Minnewaukan. That was a big day. All of the eighth graders attended this.
When I was in the fifth grade, the teacher said that if I did the work of the sixth grade, she would pass me to the seventh. I passed all the tests, but she didn’t pass me to the seventh. I asked her why and she said, “I didn’t think you could do it.” I had trouble trusting the teachers after that. Later, when I attended high school, I took six subjects every year. At the end of three years, I was all done. They couldn’t stop me from graduation. I never told anyone what I was planning. I attended college one year and then started teaching. Actually, I should have just graduated from high school.
All of the Carroll children worked in the field and milked cows. Katherine and I used to shock grain and try to yodel. We got so we were pretty good. We would laugh so hard at each other. One time Mary and I were stacking sweet clover. We got so tired and would pull and cry. Sweet clover gets all tangled up.
One time, as I was herding cattle, they got away from me. I returned home and my dad said, “Don’t come home until you bring them with you.” I looked and looked; it became dark. I didn’t dare to go home. I rode my horse, Dan, up into the Blue Mountain area. I remembered reading in a book about a way to find animals. It said, “Get off the horse and look toward the horizon. There is usually some faint light coming through.” Sure enough, I saw the feet of the cattle, but when I tried to get on the horse, I couldn’t. The wolves and the coyotes were roaming and crying. Suddenly I remembered something else I had read. “Get the horses head down and get on over the neck, then jerk the bridle and up you go.” Sure enough, it worked. I gathered the cattle and hit for home. My parents were very frightened; my dad never made that ultimatum again.
Our Christmases were very good. My mother was a wonderful cook. We always had plenty to eat. My dad would make wooden toys for us, such as tops, boxes, and spinners. We would each receive one thing. We opened our gift Christmas Day. Sometimes we had our relatives over and sometimes our neighbors (Dell Willis).
The next important holiday was the Fourth of July. We would all go to one of the parks…Wood Lake, Stump Lake, or Red Willow. We would bring a big picnic lunch of fried chicken, potato salad, lots of pickles, and nectar. We would have to go home about five to milk the cows. Then the young folks would go back to the dance. Each family had only one car, so we would go with our brother, Ed, and meet the guys there. The date would be to be taken to supper. Supper (lunch) was always served at midnight.
When we were younger, we would get together at the farm. My grandfather and grandmother Anderson would come in their buggy. He would have a bunch of fireworks in the back.
One of the things I hated to do was baby-sit the younger ones. When you walk around a dark house out in the country carrying a lamp, it is pretty frightening. My parents were both very musical. My dad played the violin behind his back and under his leg and did a very good job. He also would entertain by doing a soft shoe dance. My mother would chord on the organ. They played for all of the dances in the community and also in the Hamar Hall. As I got older, I went along. Many times I played the accordion with them. My brother, Ed, played the guitar. Those were good memories.
One fall I had to stay home from school and plow. I was only nine years old and not very big. I would jump on the foot lever to get it out of the ground. You had to do this at the end of every furrow.
Feeding threshers was a big event. The big crew would move in. Sometimes they would stay for a couple of weeks, if it rained. My mom, with our help, did all the cooking. We usually served roast beef, mashed potatoes, vegetables, pickles and pie for dinner. In the afternoon we took sandwiches and cake and a big pot of coffee out to the field. For supper we had fried salt pork, fried potatoes, vegetables, pickles, fresh bread and cake. Usually there were around a dozen men. It was exciting, but there were lots of dirty dishes to be done. We would have to carry the water in from the well, heat it on the cook stove, and use P&G soap. The water would get very greasy before we were done. We always kept the reservoir on the end of the stove full of water. As the cooking took place the water was heated.
Our Sundays were quite eventful. We would go to Mass in Tolna, nine miles away, and later Warwick, ten miles away. The dinner would be put in the oven before we left for church. What a good smell to come home to! In the afternoon my parents always took a nap. That meant we had to stay out of the house. We could read, but we couldn’t do any type of sewing on Sunday. (That was a sin.) Our farm was a gathering place for kids. We loved to skate. When we were little we made our skates out of gallon pail covers. We would play baseball, kick the can, pump pump pull away, or hide and go seek. About four o’clock my mom would have lunch ready for everyone. It was always fresh bread made on Saturday, cold meat sandwiches with large bologna, potato salad, jello made with bananas and whipped cream, and nectar. Then everyone would go home. It was then time for chores.
Every Christmas we sold Christmas Seals to help tuberculosis patients. The one who sold the most got a prize. I would always ride to Charley Harthrop’s farm and he would always turn me down. I knew he had money, so I never gave up. I never liked these people.

Chapter 2 – High School Days

The summer before I started high school in 1930, I was fourteen years old. My two sisters, Mary and Katherine, had made a batch of candy and took it upstairs to our bedroom and locked the door. (All five girls slept in one room, three in one bed and two in the other.) I wanted to get in and they wouldn’t let me. I started kicking, but it did no good. Finally, my foot went right through the door. My mom spanked me until she was played out and then called my dad. He brought the strap and also spanked until he had to quit. They tried to make me say that I was sorry. I refused because I thought my sisters were in the wrong. I remember saying, “You can spank me until you kill me, but I will never say I’m sorry.” Needless to say, that was my last spanking.
That fall I started high school in Hamar. I stayed with my grandparents who lived in Hamar. I had a small kerosene stove and cooked for myself. I brought food from home. Mom or Ed would take me in on Monday morning. I would walk home Friday after school.
Each fall Mom made us two new cotton dresses. She made our winter clothes from clothes my Aunt Kate sent from Canada. Kate was a maid for a very rich family. We had the most beautiful wool skirts and sweaters of anyone in the school. Audrey and Blair were the names of the kids Aunt Kate took care of.
There were only twenty-seven kids in high school. My class was the first to graduate from Hamar, 1933. Our main events in high school were basketball and singing. We won the county basketball championship when I was a senior and went to the regional where we got beat by one basket. I played both forward and guard. Every year we were in the County Music Contest. When I was a senior I won first place with a piano solo and first place playing a duet, and our quartet won first. Mrs. Cowie was our music teacher. She wasn’t a part of the school, but she helped us in her home. I took piano lessons from her when I was in the grades. Later, I took from Mrs. Dutee in Warwick. Mrs. Cowie told my mom that I learned faster than any other student she ever had.
All during high school I belonged to 4-H. Mrs. Rupert Odegaard was our leader. She was a dressmaker and so was mom, so I became a good sewer. My senior year I won the free week long trip to the State 4-H Conference in Fargo. We stayed at the Powers Hotel. I was so happy. That is where I got my first hair permanent. My teacher the next Monday in school said “Look at that fuzz.” I was mad at her for days. I was feeling pretty special until then.
We always did a lot of ice skating and dancing. Every Friday night there was a dance someplace. We would go to Hamar, Tolna, Pekin, or McVille. Usually one of our brothers would take a load of girls. We would always have dances promised ahead. During summer vacation we would attend either dances at Red Willow, Wood Lake, or Stump Lake, or barn dances at Kavanaugh’s barn near Devil’s Lake. That is where Katherine met Larry. We always met our dates at the dance. There was always a lot of drinking and fighting outside, so we had orders to never leave the hall or barn unless in a group to go to the outside biffy. We were forbidden to drink and none of us ever did. Only bad girls did that.
I made high school in three years. I was anxious to get making money. I took six subjects each year and challenged one, a half year of grammar. We wrote State Examinations and I passed.
We had our senior banquet in New Rockford. Mom had made me a long grey crepe de chine dress, trimmed with pink. (Later, that was my formal for college.) We didn’t have a prom because none of our boys danced, but I attended the prom in Tolna with a Schindele.
During my senior year in high school, my brother, Ed, took Ann and me to Hamar on Monday morning, April 10, 1933. My grandfather was lying dead on the floor. Grandma had been staying out on the farm because she was sick. I truly loved my grandfather. He came from Sweden. He would talk to me for hours about coming over on the boat and being a butcher in Minneapolis. Grandma also came over all alone when she was nine. She came to an aunt in Minneapolis. She worked in a laundry where she used the fluting iron on starched shirts. There they met and married.
The summer after I graduated, I wanted to earn money to go to college. I worked on Dr. Drew’s farm for Mrs. Warren. We cooked and washed for eighteen men. She washed by hand. She did the washing; I hung up the clothes and ironed the men’s shirts. We got up at five in the morning and worked until ten at night. The only time I got off was Sunday afternoon. Usually on Sunday, a bunch of us would go roller skating at Wood Lake. There I met some boys from New Rockford who told me about the college at Valley City. (My sisters had gone to Mayville College and didn’t get jobs. Mary did teach her second year, but Katherine never did teach.) I earned three dollars a week at Warrens.
Before I go any further…what and why did I herd the cattle? I started doing this about the age of 9. Mary, Katherine, and Ed worked in the fields. It was beginning to be the dry years. The pasture would dry up and there wouldn’t be any grass for the cattle. I would graze them along the roads to a tree claim near the school (Minco) or go up to Blue Mountain about three miles away. I rode a horse and took a sack lunch, a pail of water, a good book, and a piece of twine to snare gophers. (To snare a gopher, we made a slip knot, put the circle over the hole and, when the gopher put his head up, pulled fast, caught him and hit him with a stick to kill him.) We could sell gopher tails for a half cent a piece. In those days an ice cream cone cost a nickel. I would be gone all day. I always loved to read. Some of the books that I read many times were Little Women, Black Beauty, Call of the Wild, Rover Boys, and many Zane Grey books.
Times kept getting harder; the dry years and sadness hit. In the fall of 1929, the banks were closed. I remember Ed had been taking in wheat each day and bringing home coal for the winter. He hadn’t paid the coal bill and planned to do it the next day. We lost the money we had in the bank and, besides, the bills weren’t paid. Everyone lost except the banks and bank directors.
I remember being in the front room when the collector for the bank in Crary came. The folks had borrowed money there. The debt was six hundred dollars. My folks had only two hundred that they could pay. I heard the banker say, “Of course, that will only pay the interest.” I was good in math and knew different, but in those days kids were taught to not butt in, as it was called. I thought at the time, “I’m going to get an education. Nobody will ever do that to me!”
I used to haul grain from the threshing rig to town. We used wagons and a team of horses. I would make three trips a day to Hamar. I got so that I knew how much dockage there would be in a load of wheat. One time the elevator man said it was 18%. Again I was angry and knew I would handle my life in a better way.
All of these things led to our losing the farm. We had 320 acres. The bad years hit and we lost the farm for three years taxes.
The folks moved to Hamar in the fall of 1935. My grandparents owned a little place across from the school. My mom took care of my grandmother, so she got the house. She took in roomers and boarders to make a living. There was a small barn there, so she had a couple of cows and sold milk and cream. She also had chickens to eat and also sold eggs. Those days, my dad was sick with very bad arthritis and was in bed most of the time.
Many farm kids had to learn to milk cows. That was a job I hated. The cow would switch her tail and it would hit you in the face as your hands were busy milking. In busy seasons we girls would have to do the chores. My hands would be so tired after milking five or six cows and then carrying two big pails of milk into the back shed and separating it in the separator. The skim milk would come out one spout and the cream the other. We used what cream we needed (lots of whipped cream on everything) and the rest was sold to buy groceries and pay the bills. We usually took our cream to Fairmont Creamery in Devils Lake and would bring home five gallons of ice cream in a big freezer to be eaten over the weekend. Three or four of us went with the folks each time. We would have hot beef sandwiches at Grandma’s Eat Shop. Those things were our reward for working so hard.
The folks usually took us to the County Fair and to the Ringling Brothers Circus. There were many things we couldn’t do, but we were luckier than a lot of kids. We always had a lot of music in our lives. My dad played violin and my mother the pump organ. They played for all of the country dances. Later, Ed, Katherine and I played with them…Ed, guitar, Katherine, violin, and me, accordion.

Chapter 3
October, 2002
Many years later I found this book and found the time I quit writing. I am now 86, soon to be 87.
The day the banks closed was like a hit in the head. My brother, Ed, had been to town to get the last load of coal for the winter. He was supposed to write a check and pay the bills. He had decided to do it the next day. That day the banks closed! Coal not paid for, a fire had burned our hay stacks, no feed for the cattle. My parents were crushed. My brother had stayed at home to help through the depression. He left soon after; he was in his twenties. The President of the United States started the Conservation Corps. One member of a family could work and send the money home to help the family.
I started high school in Hamar. My grandparents lived there. I was determined to graduate in three years. I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. My third year I had taken all the subjects and passed the County Tests. They couldn’t stop me.
I worked for three months on Dr. Drew’s farm, helping cook and wash for 18 men. I made $3.00 a week. I entered college at Valley City State. I went one year and then got a school to teach at Rocky Mountain, near Sheyenne, North Dakota, where I met Art. Now I could help the folks.
Just before my second year of teaching, my parents and Grandma Anderson moved into Grandpa’s house, a little house across from the school. Grandma slept in their bedroom. Mom roomed Ted Nelson and Jimmy Flaagan. She made ten dollars a month. It helped them keep alive. They had a cow and chickens. We all helped what we could, but everyone was broke.
I taught a country school near New Rockford for two and a half years. Art and I saved money so we could go back to school. We walked three miles to school for $80 a month. We went to see the folks whenever we could. I had no transportation; Art came up weekends and we went to see his folks at Sheyenne and mom and dad in Hamar. My dad wasn’t well. Grandma died the year we went back to school in Valley City. It was a rough life for the folks. “Work hard all your life and end up this way.”
During the next year, we moved to Forman with Avis, 2 years old, and Peggy, one year old. A so, so life. We lived in a small place. Art was Principal of the school and made $110. Try to feed four on this.
We then moved to Sutton. Art taught for five years and I taught for two. At that time, married women didn’t teach unless you kept it quiet or the school needed you. They needed me so they asked me to teach.
When Grandma got sick she moved in with the folks on the farm. Ann and I stayed with Grandpa in town and went to school. One Monday morning we walked into the house and found Grandpa lying on the floor by his bed, dead from a heart attack. Then one year later, the folks moved to town.

Chapter 4
College Days
The next year, I attended Valley City State Normal College. I loved every minute of it. I roomed with Betty Paulson first and then Agnes Kjelland. Agnes and I are still friends. She lives in Leisure World and we live in Fountain of the Sun in Mesa, Arizona. We have come a long ways for two poor little country girls.
I loved college life and would have loved to go four years, but I needed to get to work. I lived at Foster’s rooming house with eighteen other girls. We cooked for ourselves. Mom sent me canned meat, butter, and large sour cream cookies. My allowance was $1 a week to buy bread at 5 cents a loaf, and, once in awhile, a 25 cent hamburger.
I dated lots of boys and had a very good time. My teacher, Mrs. Benson, told my mom I was a very smart student, so I just had to go to college. Here I am many years later with a Master’s Degree.
I did my student teaching at a school named Norma. It was hard work. I built the fires in the morning, taught several classes, and cleaned the school after school. My supervisor, Sebby, had it pretty easy. Later in my life I had several student teachers. I gave them guidance and tips for their own classrooms.
At the end of that year, my first year of college, the folks and Katherine picked me up at Valley City and we drove to Hankinson and she was married to Larry Fay. She had one year of college, but she never taught. Mary had gone back to college to get her Standard at Mayville. For some reason, I preferred Valley City. My whole life would have been different (if I hadn’t gone to V.C.) There I met many friends and on Hobo Day, on a blind date with Mel Hill, I was introduced to Art. The next fall I went to teach his home school. I danced with him and he bought my basket at my school basket social. Sixty-five years later I am writing this story. The choices we make in life determine who we are and what we become.
The summer after Katherine’s marriage, Ann, Bud and I took care of the crop. I had been to summer school in Valley City and came home and went into the harvest field. Bud cut the wheat and Ann and I shocked it. Then my uncle came with a threshing machine. When my folks paid the bill, there was nothing left. My mom had delivered all their children at no cost to them. I wondered how they could take the whole crop, but they did. I guess a midwife’s labor was free. Mom delivered all the babies in our community. Then she had to have a doctor when she needed help.
That fall, I changed jobs and went to Superior Township for $80 a month. I stayed at Settelmeyers. I ran into their baby, Kent, here at Fountain of the Sun many years later. I stayed there for 2 ½ years, then later, a half year. I was very lonely in this school. My first school everyone was friendly and entertained the teacher.
By the end of the second half year, we had Avis and Peggy and moved to Forman. We had some good friends there… Crandalls and Bettings and Tillyahs. We played bridge. No money, so you make do. They needed a teacher, so even though I was married, they asked me, but I didn’t teach there.
Art was the principal in Forman. We stayed two years. There was a little conflict between Art and the superintendent. Rosscup was a little jealous of Art, so we left and moved to Sutton. We rented a little old house and later found a larger one. We fixed it up and then she raised the rent.
We had many friends in Sutton, especially Bob Paintners and Manvel Andersons, and later, Kolpins. Art was superintendent for five year, then we needed more money so he took the elevator job. That’s when I went back to teaching. Only one in a family could teach; the community thought that was too much money for one family. I made $110 a month; there was no raise the second year. We paid $40 a month for a baby sitter, but we saved $1000 between the two of us, Art in the elevator and me teaching. This money was used to buy our first house we ever owned when we moved to Valley City.
My violin teacher, Knute Froysa, sold us their house for $10,000. We loved the house. I took in roomers. We rented out three of the five bedrooms and gradually became home owners. This house had our first bathroom and running water. By this time we had four kids, Avis, Peggy, Denny and Carroll. I went back to college, got my degree, and taught in Valley City for thirty years.

Chapter 5
Births of Our Four Kids

We were spending the summer at High Stantons. Avis was an easy baby. I started having cramps about four in the morning. Art and I drove into New Rockford. I was in the hospital for ten days, a nice long rest. Stantons worshipped Avis and spoiled her.
In the fall we moved to North Valley and lived in a little house on a farm. Art taught the Getchell school. At Christmas time my old Settelmeyer school fired their teacher and called to see if I would come back. We wanted to go back to school, so I took the job. Stantons took Avis for the next five months. They called her Molly. Along in March I discovered I was pregnant. I didn’t tell anyone for fear I’d lose my job. After school closed for the year Avis and I moved back to our little house. Mary stayed with us and drove into Valley City and she and Art went to school.
On August 27, Peggy was born, fourteen months after Avis. My mom had come down to stay with us. Art was out working on a threshing rig. Mom called the doctor and he came out from Valley City because there was staff infection in the hospital. Peggy was quite an easy birth and she was a good baby.
Then we found two rooms in Valley City, Sunde Apartments, and both of us went to school. We had no furniture, just an old bedstead from the attic and a mattress we bought for $3. We had a crib for Avis and a bassinet for Peggy. We also had an old table and some orange crates for shelves. We made it. I got my Standard Degree and Art got his Bachelors Degree. He worked every night from 4 until 12 at the dry cleaners. He made enough to pay our $15 rent. Art got a scholarship and I drew out my teacher’s retirement to pay our tuition. Everyone was so good to us.
On to Forman. That story is in another section of this memoir. Then on to Sutton for seven years. Denny was born when we were there. There was so much snow that I went up to New Rockford on the train and stayed at Mabel Marins. Art came up on Good Friday with Avis and Peggy. Denny was a big baby at 10 ½ pounds, so he was a forced birth. Art about split his ribs to have a son. Then the war was on. My brother, Bud, was in the 7th Army as a gunner and fought his way through Europe.
Before we left Sutton, Carroll was born, another cute little baby. She was a good baby, except right at first. She wanted to be with me wherever I went. When I went back to teaching in Sutton, she didn’t like her babysitter, so we took her up to Hamar and she stayed with my folks.
Art has written stories about each of the children and sent it to them. In these stories, he covered most of the events they took part in.
While Carroll was a baby, Art was drafted. He went to Fort Snelling and passed. They gave him a card that said if he ever needed to go they wanted him to work in science. The rules changed, so married men over thirty with four children were not needed.
We moved to Valley City. I returned to school and took Carroll with me. She and I were voted the “Outstanding Student” that year.
The folks were coming down to see our home. Art was going to get them. My dad’s birthday was near, May 7. We got a call that he had fallen over dead. Carroll was staying there and ran for help. This happened May 5. It was a sad time for us. Mom tried to stay in Hamar, but she couldn’t stand the loneliness, so she moved in with us.
Four years later, mom met Frank Braulick and married him. They had fifteen years together. Every Sunday they got in their little gray car and came to our house for Sunday dinner. Then they would go home and rest. She was 64 and he was 69. We had a nice little wedding for them followed by breakfast at our house. Then, Leonard and Cedonia Braulick, Art and I, took them to the “Treetop Room” in Moorhead. Whenever I hear “Melody of Love” I think about them.
Four years later, Ann, Ricky and Jerry Sletten came to visit us. Ann had Post Partum Blues. She was with us for six week. One day at Braulick’s house, she was cleaning a spot on her dress with gasoline in the basement and she caught on fire. She inhaled the gas fumes as she put her hands over her face to protect it. She died the next day, a terrible death. The school closed, out of respect for me, for the funeral. Ann was my friend; we were confirmed together. We kept Ricky for two years, then Harold married again and came and took him. Harold’s sister took Jerry, the baby.
Now, several years later, Ricky has killed himself. He left two beautiful daughters and a grandchild. He and his wife were separating and he couldn’t handle it. Peggy and Dale, Art and I went to the funeral in California. Poor Ricky. I wish he’d stayed with us.

Chapter 6
Back to Work
Mom was living with us in Valley City, so I decided to look for a job. I called the school to do substitute teaching. I taught sixth grade for a few days. They liked me, so when an opening appeared in the fourth grade, I finished the year and then was hired full time. What a break! At that time married women weren’t hired. I taught fourth grade for fourteen years. I loved that age, but I was anxious to explore other ideas. I took a course from a man who wrote on my paper, “Why don’t you go into counseling?” That was my answer. I attended evening classes and finally three summers at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks and received my Masters in Counseling.
I started the idea of elementary counseling in North Dakota. I visited Norma Randolph in California and then had a workshop for the teachers in Valley City so I could involve them. I worked in this area for sixteen years and ended up receiving the Glen Dolan award as Outstanding Guidance Counselor.
My granddaughter, Gayle Klinkhammer Nelson, is carrying on the tradition as she is an elementary counselor in Jamestown.

Chapter 7
Graduation of our Kids
Avis and Peggy graduated from St. Catherine’s High School the same year, 1955. Peggy made two grades in third and fourth grade. They were in the same room. They have always been good friends. Avis went into a nursing program right in Valley City; she became May Queen. Peggy went to Valley City State and became a Homecoming Queen attendant and received many other honors. Both of them were good students. It was nice to have both of them in Valley City.
Denny graduated from St. Catherine’s in 1959. He was voted Outstanding Boy. Carroll graduated from St. Catherine’s in 1962. Her top honor was Homecoming Queen. I missed it as we were at the Teachers Convention.
We started the band at St. Catherine’s. We didn’t want to send our kids there when there wasn’t a band. Denny had gotten a start on the cornet at the College School. Father Dawson said, “Okay, start one.” So we did. It gave all the kids a start in music. They all took band in college. Denny and Peggy became music majors. Carroll was also in the band, but she majored in English, library and speech.

Chapter 8
Our Many Trips
California
We took our four kids on many trips. Seeing the country is part of education. My whole family left North Dakota as they married. They all moved to California. The Depression had forced our family to leave the farm. There was no hay for the cattle, no rain for the crops, so they left. I was lucky and had a cute school to teach. So Art and I stayed with our folks.
As we made a little money teaching, we would go to California to see my four sisters and two brothers. We stayed in motels and cooked our own meals and made the trip in three or four days. We visited Bud, My World War II brother; my sister, Gertrude and her two kids; Ann and her two boys; Kate and her two girls; Mary and her two boys and a girl; and Ed and his boy and girl. Now, in 2002, they are all dead except Gertrude.
We made many trips to California and saw many beautiful things along the way…Glacier Park, Yellowstone Park, Old Faithful, and the Black Hills, besides many memories with each family. Now I still visit with some of the nieces and nephews and this is 2002. Diane and Gertrude came to the lake. Eleanor and her husband came to Arizona. Donald and his wife spent some time here last winter and life goes on.
Canada, 1950
I don’t know why we didn’t take a trip to eastern Canada sooner. My dad, John Thomas Carroll, was born in Tarrelton, near Oshawa, Canada. He had one brother, Dan, and three sisters, Kate, Nellie, and Mary. Nellie died young. After my dad’s parents died, the oldest son inherited the farm, so the rest had to get out. The girls went to work for different people, but my dad took his violin and migrated to the United States. He stopped on the Iron Range in Minnesota, worked in the mines, and, later became a logger and rode the logs down the river. He finally ended up in North Dakota. He stayed at Boyles, friends of his cousins, the Beauclairs. He met my mom, Selma Anderson, and they married. Thus we began.
Pa died in 1949. I was so sorry we didn’t make the trip sooner. We took mom and our family of six and went to eastern Canada. We spent most of our time with Aunt Kate. She had married a widow with older kids. We went to see Aunt Mary Halliday. They had a convenience store in Oshawa. They loved our kids and later came to see us in North Dakota. They had a son, Cleve. Uncle Dan was dead, but we met and liked the Carroll relatives.
Disneyland
Art and I took a trip to California with Kenny, Carroll, Mark, Peggy and David Berntson. Along the way we stayed in motels and cooked some of our meals. One place we really wanted to see was the Grand Canyon. We arrived as the sun went down so we couldn’t see the canyon. All the lodgings were full, so we all stayed in the station wagon and slept as well as we could. We got up at 4:00 A.M., walked down to the rim of the canyon and watched the sun rise. It was beautiful and, needless to say, we were thrilled.
Our destination was the Disneyland Theme Park in Anaheim, California. We loved Small World and the other attractions and were happy to be there for the 75th Birthday celebration. It was so crowed, but we had a wonderful time.
On our way home, we visited our California relatives. Art and I stayed first with Mary’s family and then with Kate. Carroll and her family spent most of their time at Mary’s in Los Gatos.
World’s Fair in Knoxville
Another trip we took with Berntsons was to the World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. We all stayed in a campground in a foldout camper (Ken and David slept in the station wagon.) Again we were crowded, but we enjoyed the many international exhibits at the Fair. We even had a police escort one night when we got lost.
On the way home we visited Opreyland in Nashville. We saw many good shows, but the one that the kids really enjoyed seeing was Loni Anderson. Carroll said that when Loni walked on stage, it was like turning on the light; she was just glamorous. Such is fame.
Our camping place wasn’t very nice, but you can’t let one incident spoil your whole vacation. “This too shall pass.” The kids were very good.
Alaska, 1967
Peggy and Dale Koppelman and Art and I drove to Alaska. Dale’s parents and Avis took care of the three kids. Kurt was a baby. Peggy had some female trouble, so some rest was recommended.
We drove to Prince Rupert and took a ferry. The sights were beautiful. We slept on the ferry, car and all. Then we had the car to drive to Don’s in Anchorage.
We had many trips while in Alaska. Don and Lois Dafoe and we four went fishing for salmon. We stayed in their cabin in the woods for three or four days. I was so cold I never wanted to go to Alaska again.
While we were in Alaska, we were in an earthquake. The dishes moved in Lois’s china cabinet. The ceiling lamp also swayed. I counted it almost six figures. Before we arrived in Anchorage, they had had a bad quake. One area had slid right into the ocean.
We also rode on the Moose Goose, a small trip that took us to see some of the sights. We went out on an ice flow or glacier. You can almost see it move across the land. After about three weeks, we drove home on the Alaska Highway. We drove straight through.
Eastern United States
We had been saving money for this trip. Three weeks was quite a while. We drove and stayed in motels, made coffee and sandwiches, and did some cooking.
We stopped at Niagra Falls. What a thrill. Denny and Carroll were a little scared when we rode on the Maid of the Mist below the falls. We drove on to New York City. We stayed on the outskirts in a motel and came into Manhattan each day.
Some friends of ours, Myrtle and Don Lawrence and family, lived in Brooklyn. We spent one day with them and went to Coney Island. This was the first time I had eaten scones. So good. Two soldiers tried to pick up Avis and Peggy at the Statue of Liberty, but we said not this time. We spent a lot of time checking the emigrants’ part wondering how my grandparents made it when they were so young. Grandma Cecelia Anderson came alone at the age of nine. Grandpa Pete Anderson had come earlier. Later they met in Minneapolis and married. Later they move to North Dakota.
Carroll, Peggy and I went to Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes while Avis, Dennis and Art took the subway to see a ball game.
On the way home, we stopped at G.T.A. and had a feast. You don’t order big meals with six people. We finally returned home and got company from Canada the same day, one day early. Ouch!
Trips with the Grandchildren
We took all of our grandchildren on special trips when they were ten to twelve years old. Our deal with the kids was that we would pay for everything except their spending money. They needed to have some responsibility.
Our first trip was with Gayle Klinkhammer and Lori Koppelman. We went east and to Disneyworld in Florida. They could ride as much as they could get on. They would ride, run back and get in line and ride again. We went to see the Kennedy Center where they shot off the missiles. We planned to go to New Orleans, but the girls decided they had seen enough.
The next trip was with Dennis Klinkhammer and Michael Koppelman. Art and I were sent by the Lions Club to the Black Hills. We took our pop-up camper and took the two boys. We saw all the sights, the Presidents, the “Story of Christmas”, the Passion Play, and many other things. I fell out of the camper and cut my lip with a knife. Needless to say, we were all frightened.
The next trip was arranged for Kurt Koppelman, Connie Dafoe, and Mark Berntson. At first the two boys thought it would be better to just take them. Grandma stepped in and said, “Connie goes.” They all three had a good time. We went to Six Flags, Chicago, and the Arch at St. Louis. Art and I enjoyed these trips, too, because we chose new areas for us too.
Peggy Berntson and Rob Dafoe took the next trip. They had always been good friends. We went to see the beginning of the Ringling Brothers Circus. There were too many smells, but they enjoyed all the circus machinery. We also stopped at the Wisconsin Dells. This is a beautiful place. I think we saw everything. One special thing they liked was the bumper cars. Just before we left, Rob said, “I’m supposed to treat you.” I said, “You don’t have to.” He quickly said, “Wait a minute.” And he ran back and spent the money.
The next trip was with Nancy Klinkhammer and David Berntson. We went to Valley Fair. They were game for everything and did all the rides. They were a little younger than the others had been. I went with them on the Log Flume water slide. Going down near the bottom, we hit a bump. I thought I was going to die it hurt so much. I tied my ribs with the strap off my purse, so that ended the rides for me.
The last trip was for Kim Dafoe. We bought her ticket to Alaska to visit with her sister, Connie, and family. She has become very close to Connie. We thought the trip would be too hard on us. By that time I had a bad back and Art had had heart surgery. But Kim got her trip.
Europe
After Art and I retired, he and I and Peggy and Dale went on a trip to Europe. Art and I had been there before on a tour (1972). The first place we landed was London. We hurried and bought tickets to see “Miss Saigon.” It was wonderful. In Paris we went to see a show that cost us a hundred dollars. Once you arrive at a place, you will never be there again, so spend it.
We went to Monte Carlo; it had changed. The gambling casinos were different. The landscape was beautiful. Princess Grace lived here. What a life. We attended an Italian dinner in Rome. One person on our tour got up and danced. Everything was Italian. We saw the fountain where “Three Coins in a Fountain” was filmed. Even though it was dry, we tossed coins in it. We laughed and laughed and Dale took a picture.
When we were getting ready to leave at a sort of airport, Peggy and I thought we wanted to pick up a few things. Dale and Art went down the steps at the air port. We didn’t know they had gone. We asked the men at the gate. We couldn’t understand them. I was scared. Finally we went down the stairs and found them.
It was a wonderful trip.

Chapter 9
Our Children’s Weddings

Avis
Avis had met Tom Klinkhammer. Yes, I introduced them. I taught at Ritchie Elementary and Tom was teaching vocational education at the high school. I happened to sit at the same table eating lunch one day at school. I said, “Avis has a nurses’ formal coming up. Would you like to meet her and be her date?” They went to that dance, then the high school prom, and were married the day after Christmas.
The day of the wedding, December 26, 1959, was a bad day because there had been a storm and all the roads were icy. None of the relatives from New Rockford and other out of town places could make it.
The wedding turned out very nice. Avis had bought a beautiful dress. The bridesmaids had red iridescent dresses. Peggy and Carroll were attendants and Denny was an usher. Pat Ludwig was also a bridesmaid.
I also had a red dress. Mom and Frank were there. The reception was at the church. The meal was at our house. Mabel Hill and Charlotte Gessner helped me make the food and serve it.
Avis and Tom left on their honeymoon, but didn’t get very far because of the slippery roads. They both had to be back to work. Avis was nursing and Tom was teaching. So were all the rest of us. Tom’s folks finally made it in spite of the storm.
Peggy
Peggy and Dale Koppelman’s wedding took place on a rainy day. She and Dale went to college together in Valley City. Peggy went to teach in Hazen, ND. While there she became “Miss Hazen” and entered the Miss North Dakota contest. She did a wonderful job with her tap dancing, but only one person can be the winner.
The wedding took place on a very rainy, cool day. We had tables set up in our back yard, flowers, river and all, but had to eat in the house. I had forgotten to plug in the chicken hot dish, so I had to go back, plug it in, and be late for the wedding.
Peggy wore the same dress that Avis had. Her bridesmaids were Barbara Kelly, Avis, and Carroll. Laverne and I almost had matching dresses, dark tan with white flowers. Many relatives attended, including mom and Frank.
They went on a honeymoon trip to the Black Hills of SD and stayed at a place they had seen before, Sylvan Lake.
They went to Ashley to teach. Peg was an English teacher and Dale was music. (This is written in November, 2002, so I have forgotten some of the happenings. Peggy got her Masters and became a librarian.)
Denny
Denny met Paula Oltman when he was teaching in Hecla, South Dakota. The wedding was in August, 1966, in Valley City. The reception was at the Country Club. The dinner was at our house. Mrs. Oltman brought food. Paula was a beautiful young girl. In their second year of marriage she was riding a horse, was bucked off, and had many severe injuries. Life was one operation after another. Finally, they were divorced. They had two children, Connie and Rob.
About two years later, Denny met Denise Forness, another very beautiful girl, and they were married. They had a cute house in Aberdeen and, eventually, Kim was born. Denny had Connie and Rob also. For some reason this marriage dissolved and he ended up in Arizona. Connie was married and Rob had joined the Navy. A little girl needs her mother, so Kim stayed with Denise.
Denny taught for two years at Queen Creek, Arizona, and met Darlene. They were married in Las Vegas. They have rented here in Fountain of the Sun, but just recently have bought into the park. It is nice for us to have them here. Now, the question is, “How long will we be here?” Art has macular degeneration and we are doctoring about this and thinking every day, “What next?”
Carroll
Carroll did not wear the same wedding dress. She was teaching at this time and wanted her own. Mom said, “I guess she can have it if she wants to.” Mom died two days before Carroll’s oldest son, Mark, was born.
Carroll and Ken Berntson had their wedding on April 1, 1967. The EBC Hit Parade was on and all their friends were back for it. Kenny played in the Hit Parade band the week, and even the night, of their wedding. For a change, we had a nice day. We had made flower decorations and pastel cloths for all the card tables at the Elks where the reception was held. Everything turned out fine. Mom and Frank and many relatives attended the wedding.
Because it was Hit Parade time, Carroll and Ken didn’t have a honeymoon at that time. She went back to teaching at Agassiz Junior High in Fargo and he went back to teaching in Buffalo. Carroll had just been Miss Valley City and attended the Miss North Dakota event in Bismarck.
(Nov. 14, 2002. They have both retired from teaching and are living in Fargo. Kenny works for Schmitt Music and Carroll baby-sits for her daughter, Peggy’s, children, Ty and Jada, in an emergency.)

Chapter 10
My Friends
In grade school we attended school at Minco Valley, a rural school near Hamar, North Dakota. We walked two miles to school. There were seven kids, first Ed, Mary, Katherine and I, then the older ones graduated and it was I, Nora, Ann, Bud, and Gertrude. Ann always stuck close to me.
My friends were Berna Jarme and Helen Halstead. My teacher in the First Grade was Miss Boyle. I sat under the buggy all day and cried because someone had made fun of me for saying Ed was my cousin. I ended up skipping a grade, but really didn’t, so I did high school in three years. I was anxious to start making money. I did spell in the State Spelling Contest at the fair in Grand Forks.
I attended high school in Hamar. I played basketball and played in the regional. We won second. I also attended the country music contests in New Rockford. I won first playing a duet, “Robin’s Return,” with Alvira Quam. We always won first in a quartet.
My best friends were Ila Christofferson and Iris Brudeseth. I stayed with my grandparents, Cecelia and Peter Anderson. They had migrated from Stockholm, Sweden.
Then I attended Valley City College for one year. I loved it, but finished going to summer school and later if life two years. We had moved to Valley City. My Freshman year my friends were Myrtle Cartwright, Madeline O’Keefe, and Agnes Kjelland. I hooked up with Agnes again in Arizona.
Later, as we returned to Valley City and I returned to college, my friends were all music students because I was majoring in music. They were Jim Ployar, Lloyd Nelson, and Star. I see Starr here at the alumni gatherings.
When I went to graduate school, Leone Osmon and I ate together every noon and I had coffee every night with Juanita Leason.
In my first teaching job, I really didn’t have a friend. I spent most weekends at Stantons. In Superior Township for 2 ½ years, it was Mary Settelmeyer and Mrs. ?. In Forman, where Art taught and I stayed home with Avis and Peggy, my friends were Lois Crandall, and Betting. We had a bridge club. In Sutton my best friends were Elayne Kolpin, Lillian Paintner, and some neighbors. In Valley City, I had many friends. I taught there for thirty years. Church friends were Marie Ukstead, Evelyn Sherman, and Ann Loh. Other friends, usually parents of children I taught were Mabel Hill, the best (I taught her both her daughters), Norma Ludvigson (I taught two of her daughters), Charlotte Gessner (taught her two daughters), Lorraine Ludwig (taught her son and daughter), McCrea, Noles and others.
After retirement my best friends are my daughters, Avis in Valley City, Peggy at the lake, and Carroll in Lisbon and Fargo, and now we’re in Mesa and Denny has developed into one of my best friends.
All the years we lived in Valley City I spent a great deal of time with Avis. It was good having a daughter in town. We always respected each other’s privacy. We made dinner dates etc., but didn’t just drop in to eat. We were both working, me teaching and Avis was a nurse.
In Valley City my father had died and mom was living with us. She said she just cound not stay alone in Hamar. We had a big house, so we welcomed her. Later she met Frank Braulick, they married and had fifteen happy years together. She also was my friend.
My mom helped me get my education, even taking me to town in the hay rack. I stayed with my grandparents from Sweden in Hamar. Later my teacher, Mrs. Benson, told my mother that I must go to college. I cooked for myself. She sent me canned beef, butter, and homemade cookies as often as I needed food. Bread was 5 cents a loaf, oranges 1 cent a piece. The whole year cost me only ? Tuition was 12 dollars a quarter. My dad wasn’t well, but he helped on the farm. These were the depression years.

Chapter 11
My Mom
From an early age, I loved to be half sick. Then I could sleep at the foot of the folks’ bed. My mom would move her feet, we’d take our pillow, and cuddle in.
We walked two miles to Ninco? School. I became a good runner because we had to run to get away from the neighbor’s bull. In winter we drove ourselves in a covered-in sleigh. In fall and spring, we rode horseback and herded the cattle on the way. When we arrived home to a cozy fire, there was always a treat, either left over pancakes or mom had baked. She baked seventeen loaves of bread twice a week. Yummy to eat with syrup or honey. We raised bees and had three new hives a year. We stored them in their hives in the dirt basement. We also stored 100 bushels of potatoes, carrots in sand, and eggs in egg crates.
Who did all this work? My mom! She also made all of the clothes for her seven children. She was a dress maker. She also sewed for others. Then she was also a mid-wife and delivered all the babies in our area. Most families had five to as high as nine children, but when mom had a baby, the doctor was called and she’d have to hire a woman to help for a few days. For the neighbors, her services were free.
Grade school in a rural school was cook as the kids say now. I spelled in a state spelling contest in Grand Forks. I made a dumb mistake, so I only won fifth. Mom took me to Minnewaukan to compete in a music contest. I won in piano.
Later, when I attended high school in Hamar, staying with my grandparents, mom often took me into town in the ray rack. We lived five miles away. Then on the way home, she would stop at the tree claim and load a load of hay to take home for the cattle. My dad was home to do the chores and to take care of my grandmother. Ann, my sister, and I stayed with grandpa. He owned the pool hall and spent every night playing poker.
I finished high school in three years. The depression had arrived and I was anxious to make money. The folks had been swindled out of the farm. No one was going to do that to me. Later, as I became a counselor, I told my classes how and when and why I decided to get a good education.
Mom was my person to admire and help. After my dad died, she tried it alone. After a year she came to live with us in Valley City. My thanks from her was, “I never thought I’d have it so nice.”

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1. Our hotel room is ridiculously small. We could have spent more money, of course, but it came recommended to us and it’s not exactly cheap. I think they are all like this. We had to sit on our suitcases in the elevator. If you turn around in the shower you accidentally turn the water off (or worse, turn it to scalding hot). It’s basically a bed with 2 feet of room around the perimeter. I guess that is what you get in an old city. But we have a tiny balcony and we are in a lovely part of town, so we are not unhappy about it.
2. The people here are gorgeous and thin. The pudgy American look is entirely absent. Of course, there are people of all shapes and sizes, but it is obvious that these people are much, much healthier than your average American. They walk more, bike more, eat less and eat better and it shows. The women are skinny, with bare legs, high heels and, on average, very beautiful. The men, too, just seem more attractive than I am used to. I’m sure it’s just a sort of culture shock and the trendy part of town we are in, but it is obvious.
3. We’ve had mixed reactions on the language. Most people speak enough English to help us get by. We have enough of the common phrases to get by. Most people seem to know right away we are English speakers. It’s a little disconcerting at times but in general not a problem at all.
4. One friend told me: everyone in Paris is an asshole, don’t take it personally. This has not been our experience, but it is really funny how some people go from friendly to unfriendly when we say “parlez-vous anglais?” Some become more helpful and some less. I don’t really understand it.
5. The food over all has been excellent. I doubt we are hitting the best places in town, but we have had many fine meals and none which were unpleasant.
6. There are almost no grocery stores or convenience stores that we’ve seen. We’ve walked for miles and seen exactly one grocery store. Convenience stores are equally rare.
7. The coffee is very good, and so are the pastries, but not really any better than the States. Espresso seems to be the drink of choice. Virtually no brewed coffee, although we did see two Starbucks. We did not stop in. We’ve also seen a few McDonalds.
8. Booze is ridiculously expensive. I had a gin and tonic that was $25. This was not at some fancy place. Wine and beer are much more affordable. I don’t know why — taxes?
9. The airport/customs experience was a well-oiled machine. No waiting, no fuss, in and out in no time.
10. It is a very international city. Every race, color and creed are everywhere all the time. We’ve heard every language and accent imaginable.

All in all we are having a great time and would highly recommend it to anyone. Just be ready to do things a little different than you are used to and you will have a good time.

Now we are heading out for our second-to-last dinner. Au revoir!

In particular, he talks about how married people are happier than unmarried people and that men in particular are much happier when married than when unmarried. He also claims that people with children are unhappier than people without. He is talking about averages based on polling, so individual cases vary wildly, of course. But still, as a married man with children, I found it quite thought provoking.

First of all, I totally understand why married people are happier. As much as we might like to fantasize about being single and alone, being alone gets old. Sharing our lives with a partner is something that is deep in our bones and I’m not surprised that people with a committed, loving partner are happier than those without.

But the kids thing surprised me. Kids bring such strong emotions into our lives. You literally fall in love with your own kids and it is very rewarding and very satisfying, in a way. Yet I totally understand, after thinking about it, why people with kids poll less happy: freedom. Or more accurately, the lack of freedom. Kids steal your freedom and it hurts like a bitch.

Marriage changes your freedom a lot, but we all know where the Emergency Exit is. We choose to be married and we can unchoose it whenever we want. Kids, though, are forever.

I totally love my kids. They are by far the most important people in my life. I wouldn’t unmake them in my unhappiest moments. But I get it, kids hurt.

I see both sides of this. There are huge double-standards when it comes to how men and women are treated. Women are objectified and marginalized again and again by men (and, to be fair, by women, too). There is no question in my mind that women are treated unfairly and are demeaned and discriminated against, much moreso than men.

But the other side is this — beautiful women are universally adored. This is a fact. People of every gender, race, color and creed, on average, see being beautiful as a good, desirable and noticeable thing. Women are also objectified by and for other women all the time. The entire beauty and fashion industries cater to this.

So if you are a woman who is a scientist, singer, painter, business executive, doctor, lawyer, acrobat or plumber, if you are beautiful, people will notice. Men will notice, of course, but women will notice, too. It is very common, in fact, for women to point out how beautiful other women are.

So if you are a very smart scientist-blogger who happens to be beautiful, it will be noticed. This should be taken as obvious.

Unfortunately, it also is a fact that people, almost exclusively men, will be lame about it to some degree. Often they are not trying to be lame, but sometime they are. There are people who honestly look at beautiful women as pieces of meat. This is appalling and these people are idiots. But many men who are lame about it are actually trying to be nice. They don’t feel they are demeaning someone by calling out the fact that they are beautiful.

So to say “I’ll be the first to say that Sheril is quite fetching” is a far cry, IMHO, from demeaning someone as a piece of meat. Sheril is, in fact, attractive! The young man who made this statement was saying what many people were thinking. Should this statement have not been uttered? Was it off base for someone to comment on the physical appearance of this women?

It’s hard for me to reach that conclusion. The blogger in question is blogging for Discover Magazine, a big, popular public magazine. Welcome to public life. Your physical appearance is fair game, just like it is for your male co-blogger, who is kind of hot himself.

I recognize that I could be wrong about this. I am genetically disposed to appreciating beautiful women. It is never, ever my intent to pre-judge, demean or disrespect anyone, beautiful women included. But it is hard to apologize for noticing them.

1. Seat us where we won’t bother other people without dooming us to the shitty table by the trash cans. Any good restaurant should contemplate where to put families with small children so they can enjoy themselves without being self-conscious.

2. Don’t put spillable things right in front of the kids. We had a waitress set 4 full water glasses directly in front of our (then) 2-year old. They were spilled instantly. Do we even have to mention this one? The same goes for the sharp and/or expensive things. Keep all that shit away from our kids. We’ll do it for you, believe me, but if you are aware of it you can save yourself a lot of trouble and mess.

3. Have enough high-chairs so we don’t have to hold our babies in our laps. Complain to your boss if you do not.

4. Get the kids something to eat right away. Breadsticks, carrots, ANYTHING.

5. Give the kids something to do. Crayons are perfect.

6. Be flexible with the menu. Say Yes when we ask for some plain noodles or a simple chicken breast. We are not the first people to ask this. You shouldn’t have to ask your boss or make it seem like some BFD.

7. Bring the kids’ food out first. Do not bring the kids food at the same time as the expensive entrees of the parents. We want to eat hot food, too.

8. Keep things moving. Families with small children don’t want a 2-hour dinner. We need to order, eat and leave in under an hour, generally speaking.

9. Be fun and friendly to the kids. Try out your extra-cool goth vibe on someone else. We are all here to enjoy ourselves. If you don’t like your job, quit. But if you are waiting on my family, treat us to a good time.

10. We’re messy. We know. We will tip you extra for the trouble.

The childless reading this might be thinking — don’t the parents have some responsibility in all of this? Of course we do. We do all 10 of these things every freaking day. We compensate daily for the wait staff that doesn’t get this stuff. We are not really asking for extra special treatment. It’s just that everyone, the servers included, have a better time if there is at least some cognition about this kind of thing.

Finally a bonus item for the other patrons of the restaurant:

11. We know having young children nearby can be annoying when all you want is a quiet dinner. Welcome to Earth, where you were once a noisy, messy child yourself. Cut us some slack.

Thank you!

This email may contain confidential material. If you were not an intended recipient I obviously fucked up and it is my own damn fault. It is insane to assume that I can bind you to some agreement based on my own inability to send a fucking email. I should be fired. Immediately.

…I hear/see a lot more jeers than cheers in the Microsoft press rooms and events…

Umm maybe that’s because they make products so shitty even Windows users don’t buy them? (read: Vista)

Daniel Lyons, a rude and inarticulate fellow from what I can gather, apparently thinks that Steve Jobs’s medical records should be published on a daily blog. If not, the media is to blame!

My personal belief is that if Apple can’t thrive without Steve Jobs Apple can’t thrive. If Jobs is that necessary, they are fucked.

The Apple Blog has a lot of links if you want to follow this silly topic around the ‘net. It’s the same old shit — people do not like that other people like Apple. Some weenies make a living at not liking us for liking Apple.

Me thinks thou doth protesteth too much. Daniel Eran Dilger basically rips them up.

I think the Obama comparison is telling. If you really get excited about something, people just can’t resist characterizing it as some sort of fanboy infatuation. They just can’t give us credit for using our brains. It must be some personal failing on our part.

WRONG. Quality is a mysterious thing but we know it when we see it. And, perhaps more importantly, we don’t apologize for seeing it.

I’m very sorry your operating system sucks. I’m sorry that you are willing to put up with the second-rate Windows Empire. I’m really sorry that Steve Jobs is not dying fast enough for you. Please, dear Windows Weenies, go fuck yourself. Thrice.

The bah humbug, for me, comes from the fact that Christmas has become this unwieldy cultural tradition that lasts a month. Christmas should start on 12/24 and conclude on 12/25. That’s it. No, we have to celebrate Christmas with every possible mother and father every single year. So this year we have my family Christmas on the 20th and then Cindy’s extended family Christmas on the 25th and then Christmas with her Dad on the 26th and then with her Mom on the 27th. That is just ridiculous.

I also hate the mindless spending that goes on. I don’t buy many Christmas presents. It’s not that I’m not generous, it’s that I hate the spending warfare that goes on. I don’t think we should spend a lot of money at Christmas time. I’d rather get a book or a photo and kids would be fine with one new toy or two. I’m forced practically at gunpoint to bring home a car full of plastic crap every year.

We do this to ourselves. We pile all these events into this one tiny little timeframe because we have escalated what was once an intimate and modest and quaint little holiday into a multi-week hell of running around spending money.

I have no war on Christmas on philosophical grounds. I’m an atheist and I don’t care who celebrates what, when or how. But I do feel a minor war coming on practical grounds. We’ve gone too far. It’s not fun anymore. I’d prefer the holidays be…smaller.

I think the financial model that most photographers adopt is ridiculous. The problem is, they don’t charge for what I do value and they charge a lot for what I don’t value. I have 2 examples to illustrate this.

We went to Smirk for a photo shoot with the kids. It was $100 for the sitting. We went there and there was a nice studio with lights and equipment and the photographer and her assistant did a nice job with the kids. It took about 30 minutes.

Then it came time to buy photos. First of all, they didn’t want to give us any proofs. They wanted us to come to their studio to choose photos. My wife insisted they give us proofs so they gave us crappy inkjet proofs on plain paper.

Then the price list — if we wanted a digital copy of a single image, $125! So to get digital copies of 10 photos would be $1250! Are you fucking kidding me? All of the print prices are like this, too. They act like their prints are original works of art that they own.

Here is my objection: Having a studio with lights and equipment is expensive. Having talent to take pictures is something I’m willing to pay for. Charge me for these things which I value! Copying the image to a CD is not something I value. I also don’t consider photographs I paid you to take to be your property, they are my property. That’s why I paid for your time to take the pictures. If you charge me $100 for the things I value and $1250 for the things I don’t value, I will think you are an idiot.

Here’s my other example — we went to a wedding. The wedding party paid a lot of money for a very good photographer. Said photographer then charged $10 per 4×6 print. Know what Apple charges for a 4×6? $0.12. snapfish charges $0.09. Why in God’s name would this photographer, who was paid very well for their time and expertise, charge 100 times the cost of a normal 4×6?

I highly value the skills of great photographers. I will pay for it. But in the age of digital photography, they have to get over this notion that they make money on the prints. The age of darkrooms and hand-crafted prints is over. Charge for the time and the expertise, do not charge for making me a goddamn CD.

There are many people I love in this world but, if push came to shove, it is hard to predict who among them, if any, I would actually die for. It is easy to say that I would die for my awesome wife or my brother or sister but if the moment were to arrive, without time to think about it, I cannot really predict what I would do.

This is not true of my children. I would absolutely and without a moment’s hesitation die for them. My kids are a higher purpose, of a sort, for me. They need me, they love me and they are wonderful lovable little beings. They are without question the most important thing in my life.

I’ve written before about my belief that life without children is a wonderful thing. I don’t think parenthood is necessarily greater than any other lifestyle choice. But once that bridge is crossed I think all but the most selfish losers quickly find their higher purpose in their children.

The tension is — there is much I want to do in my life. I to not intend to be a servant to my children. Yet my life has been unquestionably enriched by their presence.

And finally — I think perhaps the only good thing about religion is that it gives people a little humility about their place in the world. I don’t need religion to give me that, personally, but the realization that there are things more important than yourself is one that is quite necessary in this world.

We also have a few new things over at Slacker Astronomy.

And did you check out my iPhone app, Bubbler? GIVE ME $0.99 NOW!!!!!

Spread a little too thin sometimes…

This is kind of a cool plot using only the GPS data:

Here is a plot of the first few seconds of the launch from the accelerometer:

You can see that the data peaks at 3g when I was expecting 12g. The acceleration heads back up from negative territory quicker that predicted as well. The prediction is from RASAero.

Here’s the whole flight from the accelerometer:

The red line at 1 at t < 0 the phone is sitting upright in the rocket before launch. Most of the acceleration is in the Y axis at launch but some is in Z as the rocket leans over into the wind. The ejection charge, in theory, goes off at 15 seconds or so but at 22 seconds the accelerometer goes nuts and by 27 seconds the iphone is now inverted, hanging upside down from the parachute. The data dies for some unknown reason when it hits the ground at t=74s.

I need to look for rotation in the X and Z axes with Fourier or something.

It’s taken me awhile to understand the data I got from the first launch. Using the video, the GPS data, the accelerometer data and my own recollections, I’ve put together a rough timeline of events. I’ve notated it on the plot of the altitude. A couple of weird things happened.

First of all, with the engine I used, it should have gone to 1200 feet or so. It actually went 670 feet. This was an Aerotech G80-13 engine. Every calculation I ran using various software packages for this purpose had the altitude between 1200-1500 feet. So why did it only go to 55% of the predicted height? I noticed it says in the Aerotech instructions that if the igniter doesn’t penetrate all the way up the tube you can get a reduced thrust situation. That is apparently what happened.

But why did it go up for so long then? The 13 second delay wasn’t nearly enough, apogee wasn’t until almost 30 seconds into the flight. I’ll note that I don’t have error bars on my altitude data because I didn’t log it, which was stupid. Is it possible that GPS is under-reporting the altitude? The calculated velocity is quite slow from this plot — about 11 m/s or about 25 mph. Did the motor burn with less thrust but longer?

As I watched it, you could see the rocket turn over at apogee before the chute came out. So I think the ejection charge went off at 15 seconds or so but the payload bay didn’t come all the way out. Things get really turbulent at 22 seconds and when the rocket tips over I think the payload bay finally comes loose. On the video you can hear me say that I see the chute at 31 seconds. I’m not sure if it was fully deployed or if that is the anomaly just before 40 seconds.

The descent looks like a constant, terminal velocity of 3.8 m/s (8.5 mph).

I’ll show you the accelerometer data next!

The reasons were obvious: the iPhone has a 3D accelerometer in it, as well as GPS, including altitude, network access and a really great development environment (Xcode).

So my goal was to write a program for the iPhone that would log all of the data inside the phone for later retrieval. At the same time I would send out the GPS position over the network to my web server to act as a rocket finder in case it got lost. I had just lost 3 rockets so that was big on my mind. I didn’t want to send my iPhone into a corn field or the middle of the woods and not be able to retrieve it.

So that’s what I did. I wrote the code, built the rocket and launched it! It was one of the most fun geek/dork projects I’ve ever worked on. Let me add that there is nothing very special about this on either the iPhone dev side or the model rocketry side. People do far more interesting things in both regimes. But, as far as I know, no one has ever launched an iPhone in a model rocket. I did it, I didn’t blow up my iPhone in the process, and I got some nice data to play with.

This is only the prelude — more to come!

We launched the RTF rocket and had fun with it. Meanwhile, we worked on the kit rocket, which was an Estes Hi-Flyer. We got it done eventually and then went to a launch held by Tripoli Minnesota. The launch was a lot of fun, with a lot of big and cool rockets. We signed up to launch the Hi-Flyer and after it got off the pad it went crazy, flying in loop-de-loops and crashing on the ground amidst the spectators. We laughed it off but I was embarrassed. It was one of those learning moments, though. I’ll tell you what was wrong in a minute. (Any rocketeers reading this know exactly what was wrong.)

But I had the bug and ordered a LOC Aura. It’s a bigger rocket, about 2 feet tall, and capable of flying larger motors than are made by Estes. Let me make a confession — I’m a “quick and dirty” guy. My memories of making models when I was a kid are that I always screwed it up. Literally every time I made a mess of it. In astronomy, I am kind of the same way when it comes to the mechanical things. I am very careful and systematic when I handle the data, but I’m just not very good at delicate, detail-oriented things.

So I enjoyed the challenge of taking my time, a few minutes every day, making the Aura to the best of my abilities. I sanded and glued and sanded and primed and painted. Then I’d sand more and paint more. I tried to make it perfect. In the end it wasn’t perfect but it was very close, as close as I’ve ever been, that’s for sure.

In the meantime I wanted to know what went wrong with the Hi-Flyer. Actually, on the drive home from the failed launch, I read through the instructions I had with me and noticed a major oversight on my part — always test the stability!

With a rocket, the fins act as wings but unlike wings on a plane, the goal is not to provide lift but to keep the rocket going straight. Each of the 3 fins, if displaced from equilibrium, tries to bring the rocket back in line with the wind. It’s basically like a wind vane. But that’s not all, the fins cause the rocket to pivot on its center of gravity when they correct the flight. The center of gravity is the balance point of the rocket with respect to gravity. There is a similar point, called the center of pressure, which is the balance point, in a sense, with respect to the air pressure. If the center of gravity is between the center of pressure and the nose of the rocket, the rocket is stable and it will fly into the wind. If the center of gravity is on the same point as the center of pressure, the rocket is stable but barely so and it wanders around a bit. If the center of gravity is between the center of pressure and the tail of the rocket, the rocket is called “negatively stable” and it flies around in loop-de-loops and crashes to the ground.

You can calculate the center of pressure and you can easily find the center of gravity by balancing the rocket on your finger. You should never fly a rocket that is negatively stable.

So I learned all this, mainly by reading Handbook of Model Rocketry. So while it was great fun to make the rocket physically, it was also a lot of fun to learn about the aerodynamics and math behind how rockets fly.

So the Aura was not only beautiful but it was slightly over-stable. If the center of gravity is forward of the center of pressure by the diameter of the rocket, it’s called “1 caliber” stability. The Aura was at 2 caliber stability or so, which gives a nice margin of error.

So today we got out and launched both the Hi-Flyer and the Aura. It was really fun. We flew the Hi-Flyer on a “A” engine first, just to make sure it was stable. I had poured Elmer’s glue in the nose cone to bring the center of gravity forward. It flew great and landed right back in the field. Then we flew the Aura on an “F” engine. It went completely out of site. It arced into the wind and we lost it but then we saw the ejection charge go off. It had a large, blaze orange streamer so we could see it coming down. It landed right next to Dale and Marth’s barn, probably a half mile from where we launched it. I think we probably got to 3000-4000 ft. The rocket was completely unharmed when we finally found it — just a little mud on one fin.

Then we launched the Hi-Flyer again on a “C” engine. I still don’t know what happened. It went up fine and we saw the ejection charge go off but we never saw the rocket again after that. The shock cord might have broke, sending the nose cone flying off on it’s own. It’s a tiny rocket, so if the streamer didn’t come out it could easily be missed. Obviously, since we missed it!

Then we launched the Aura again. The wind had come up and I was worried it was going to blow into the woods to the east. So I pointed it a little bit into the wind. It went off like a rocket and, since the wind was blowing harder, arced even harder into the wind. It almost seems like it was flying horizontal. It went out of sight again and again we saw the ejection charge and the streamer. It looked like it was going to land right back near the launching pad. But the wind didn’t blow it as much as we hoped and the rocket ended up falling into the woods to the west of the field. And it’s a huge field, let me tell you.

We looked for the Aura for probably an hour or more and finally I found it high up in fairly skinny tree. There was no way to get it unless we cut down the tree. Because it wasn’t our tree, we left it there. It’s still there right now. WWAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH.

I am actually a little bit bummed, but mostly it was just a lot of fun. Rockets like the Aura can break the sound barrier and go supersonic. They can go up thousands of feet. It’s a very fun thing to do if you have kids and even if you don’t. Play around. Have some fun. Build some stuff. Blast off.

But I just don’t really care about the look/feel and I’ll probably just change it a lot for no reason. Read the words and be kind to the rest!

I’ll also unfollow you if you constantly send @reply tweats. You know most people are only hearing one side of the conversation so use it sparingly or at least make it interesting on its own. There are better channels for one-to-one conversation.

In the past when Apple had popular product launches you could walk in the store on Day 1 and buy it. Now Apple has joined the ranks of companies so stupid they let supply limit their sales rather than demand. There is a phrase for this: bad planning.

1. Two writers from Jezebel go on a comedy show hosted by Lizz Winstead, a co-creator (or something) of the Daily Show.
2. The show turns out pretty lame and uncomfortable and not that funny.
3. Lizz Winstead proceeds to lambast the Jezebel writers (and cross posts it on the Huffington Post), accusing them of being drunks, idiots and bad role models. The commenters hog pile on.
4. One of the writers, “Slut Machine” aka Tracie Egan, links to a video of Lizz Winstead acting like a complete bitch.

It’s all fascinating and hilarious, IMHO.

Here is my quick analysis:

1. It’s unfair to invite people on a comedy show and then grill them and expect them to be role models for 15-year old girls. I say all sorts of stupid things when I’m trying to be funny.

2. They said some things that sound pretty stupid unless you think they are funny, which I kinda do. Like she said “I don’t get raped because I live in Williamsburg, and all the guys there are pussies.” and “And I know it’s an irresponsible thing to say, but it’s (pulling out) The Most Fun Way Not To Get Pregnant”. That’s hilarious. Unless you think rape can never be funny and jokes about unsafe sex are deeply harmful to young people in light of the current AIDS epidemic.

3. With that said, I’m sure Lizz Winstead is a smart and well-meaning person but instead of writing this off as bad humor she interpreted it as some major failure in these young women and I think it was unfair.

Just 23 percent of Americans live in rural areas, and their roads carry less than half of the nation’s traffic. Yet they account for more than half of the nation’s vehicular deaths, according to a report issued this year by the U.S. Dept. of Transportation. In 2006, for example, 55 percent of all motor vehicle fatalities occurred in rural crashes.
…
One reason is that more rural residents shun seat belts, according to the national report. Last year 84 percent of American in urban areas said they buckle up compared to 78 percent in rural areas. A University of Minnesota study reported in December found that pickup truck drivers were the least likely in the state to use the belts.

Happiness is the craft of enjoying yourself, forgiving yourself and bettering yourself, a little every day.

Then there is this shit storm and this utter bullshit of a post explaining what happened:

Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her.

So they deleted unpublished all references to Violet Blue on their site.

On the one hand, they say they don’t want to lend her credibility and on the other they say, innocently, that all sites delete content for various reason, as if they were just doing some regular maintenance.

You can’t have it both ways: did you unpublish because of this credibility thing or did you unpublish because of regular maintenance? Says Hayden: I’m almost impressed by the pretentious meanings people have been reading into “unpublish.”

Speaking of pretentious, do you think unpublish is actually different than delete in any tangible way to visitors on the web? Of course not. So quit this word parsing nonsense please and get your story straight.

I do agree that Boing Boing can do whatever the hell they want. But this looks like a lover’s spat gone public and it makes Boing Boing look like idiots. Their response makes them look even worse.

Just say “she pissed us off so we deleted every mention of her out of spite”. Then we’ll say, OK, fine, you little babies. Instead they pretend they are so above the fray and so mature and get this wordsmith to spin it for them like, what’s the big deal about regular maintenance?

The big deal is it’s fucking lame to unpublish posts about someone for any reason. Yes, you are free to do it, it’s still lame. The reaction you are getting from this, Boing Boing, is because you did something lame. Just admit it.

I’m not a violent person and I abhor violence. It represents so many failures. Violence is never the best thing except when it is the only thing.

This poor woman was raped by a gang of men. I don’t want to rehabilitate those men. I don’t want to make up for their unfortunate upbringing, their shitty parents, their fucked up role models. I don’t give a rat’s ass that these men, some would say, are victims. There is not a single atom of sympathy in me anywhere for these men. I want them killed. I want them beaten up with baseball bats or raped to death in prison. I want the remainder of their lives to be a living hell of regret at the horror they unleashed on this woman. I want them to whimper and cry like little babies as they suffer and suffer in humiliation and pain. I want their lives over except in those ways they can be made worse than death.

This is why wars start. In the olden days of tribal warfare, a gang of men would go over to this house and kill every male in a 6 block radius. You are either for us or against us and if you do this shit or harbor people that do this shit, we are taking you out. Then those people would get mad and come back and kill people over here, and so on.

Note I do not know the race of any of the parties involved. I’m not talking about race wars I’m talking about tribal wars. Those two have often been strongly correlated in the past. It’s not really the case any more today. In this case the tribes are peaceful law abiding people on one side and gangsters and criminals on the other. That’s why our jails are full of gangsters and criminals. Unfortunately our streets are too.

In the end, like it or not, laws are enforced, literally and philosophically, with violence.

So…the hospital can’t tell me, the father of my son, who called the hospital about my son? That is fucking insane.

It’s probably related to all you divorced people who hate your ex. If this was a rational world, not only would they be able to tell me who is calling the hospital on behalf of my son, they would fucking call me and tell me about it. Apparently being the legal parent and guardian of my son doesn’t give me the privilege of knowing who is getting medical care for my son? Again, that is fucking insane.

But I think that people in charge of these projects vastly underestimate the amount of economic potential that they waste because the time that people waste in traffic jams is not on their budget. There is no one at the table looking after the interest of commuters. Especially in these times of high fuel costs, it is irresponsible and negligent to assume that there is no cost associated with inconveniencing drivers. There are very, very high costs — lost productivity, wasted fuel and increased air pollution, not to mention the human cost in terms of stress and reduction of family time.

These people are pissed off about it and they should be. MNDot has made tons of shitty decisions in the wake of the 35W bridge collapse. They completely ignore the impact on drivers of these shitty decisions and we should throw the bums out.

It just cracks me up that on the Internet engineers get woken up by pagers if there is congestion or outages. On the roadways, it is just expected that the system totally breaks down several times per day. It’s unsafe, it reduces the quality of life, it wastes energy and we have to prioritize modernization of our urban roadways. But our governor is too much of an ideological chicken shit to raise the money to get it done.

It occurs to me that people go through 3 stages in their life:

1. Having no money.
2. Having negative amounts of money.
3. Having positive amounts of money.

That’s how it went for me, anyway. I had no money during high school and college. I had debt after college. Then I had a little money for a while during my Prince years and then I went into debt again when I started my first business. After I sold that business it was the first time I had the opportunity to think about saving money.

I’m not cheap and I’m not particularly frugal but at the same time, I have very modest tastes. Luxury and exclusivity are abhorrent concepts to me. The things I want, for the most part, money can’t buy.

Still…all of us get old someday and we’d all like to retire to a comfortable life of some sort. It’s foolish not to take care of business. I’m actually quite jealous of academics who get tenure and can look forward to a paycheck until the day they die. That’s not the life I lead. The only way I get to a comfortable retirement is to put it away now.

The song I linked above (which you aren’t listening to) I wrote a long time ago when I had more money than time. When you are in that situation, it does not seem worth it. I will not become one of those people who put money before my kids or my family or my own interests and desires (and maybe even a vice or two). Money is a utility. It’s has no value in and of itself. I’m going to take care of business but I’m not going to whore my life out for money.

That’s actually why I’m so proud of my business, Clockwork. We put a lot of value on quality of life and we have a lot of fun as a result.

I want to make a nice living and earn a nice retirement but I want to do it honorably.

lolife [10:15pm] % history | awk '{print $3}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head
73 ls
53 svn
38 cd
35 ssh
28 lepton
21 sudo
19 vi
17 ping
13 exit
12 pwd

I use tcsh so my command is a bit different than his.

If you are a frequent visitor I would highly encourage you to register. Then I can approve you so you can comment without moderation. I’m going to try to set the perms as liberally as I can without being bombarded with spam.

The old version of lolife.com/blog is here for a little while in case I screwed anything up.

Using this definition its literally self-evident that if you want to convince people of something that you should approach your argument in a manner most likely to do so! That’s just obvious.

It’s a separate question whether you should have that goal or not. I.E. it would be a tedious world if everyone always spoke with utter care for maximum convincing power. I’m going to talk about religion differently if I’m with a bunch of atheists than I do if I’m at a funeral. Sometimes we preach to the choir and enjoy reveling in our superior views.

But, yes, if your goal is to convince, framing is a no-brainer.

Generally the framing debate at scienceblogs relates to the “new atheists” and the “battle of science and religion”. Dawkins and Myers alienate the people they are trying to convince, says one side. Dawkins and Myers respond: fuck you, we have every right to speak our opinions when and how we feel.

They are both right.

Dawkins and Myers do alienate the people they are trying to convince by focusing on the most radical and ridiculous examples of religion. That’s not all they do, by a long shot and I agree with them on literally almost everything. But they do alienate people. That’s a fact whether you like it or not. Religious moderates, who are an important political ally of secularists, are painted with the same broad brush as loonies like young earth creationists.

But on the other hand, and really more importantly, what Dawkins and Myers have done is say what they think. They used their best judgment. They have no responsibility to religious moderates, secularists or anyone else. Their words have been a very important part of the debate and we would be much poorer without them. We’re all grown ups and we should be able to handle it if it gets a little rough sometimes.

I’ve loved a lot of pets in my day but I hate my cat. It’s fair, though, because my cat hates me. I think it’s fair to say we’ve always hated each other. You see, we got him first (Case is his name) and we instantly didn’t hit it off. So we got one of his brothers, too, whose name was Q. Q was an awesome cat. I loved that cat. I would have died for that cat. But having Q around did not loosen Case up. He pretty much hates all people. Oddly (or not) my dog Stella is apparently the only creature on earth that Case doesn’t hate.

I have never harmed this cat. I have tried to be friends. It hasn’t worked out. The feeling is mutual and we’re both OK with it.

But lately I have been trying to think of the best way to kill my cat, if I was to kill my cat. It must be legal for me to kill my cat, right? Here’s what I’ve come up with so far. Let me know if you have others to add.

1. Drive it out to the country and shoot it.
2. Drive it out to the country and leave him there.
3. Bring it to the vet for a shot in a sterile room.
4. Put it in a 5-gallon bucket with a tight lid and let him suffocate.
5. Fill the bucket in #4 above with water.

For #1, my cat would be freaking out (not in its normal environment) so I’d have to put it in a cardboard box and then just shoot the box a few times. But if I’m gonna drive to the country, I may as well give him a chance to live off the land (#2). I personally think #3 is really lame. If I had to kill my cat at home I think I’d put catnip in a bucket and try get him in there and all fucked up and then I’d put the lid on real tight and let him go to sleep (#4).

What do you think?

I’M KIDDING!

(or am I…?)

I was raised, for the most part, in Grand Forks, North Dakota, home of the University of North Dakota, which is home of the UND Fighting Sioux. There has been on on-going controversy about the name/mascot of the Sioux because it is the name of several living Indian bands. The NCAA has rules which prohibit the use of Indian names, nicknames and mascots.

It’s been an extra controversy in Grand Forks because a rich dick by the name of Ralph Engelstad donated a bunch of money to UND for a new hockey arena (a sport which UND excels at nationally) and then threatened to withdraw it when they considered changing the name.

But the name has got to change. It saddens me, as a long time Sioux hockey fan, to lose the tradition I grew up with. But my respect for the living nations that were once part of the Oceti Sakowin (Great Sioux Nation) is greater. You can’t honor people against their will. And while many North Dakotans are respectful of their Indian neighbors, many are not and many hockey fans are not and the cartoons and caricatures of Native Americans as entertainment for white people is wholly inappropriate.

It’s not the name that makes the UND Fighting Sioux the UND Fighting Sioux. We’ll love our hockey team regardless of the name. It’s never too late to do the right thing.

(Thanks to massdistraction for taking a nice pic of my Sioux t-shirt!)

This cracks me up. It cracks me up because it hints at a very deep truth — the struggle to use written text in a way that adequately communicates emotional content. Never before have we had this near-instantaneous interpersonal written communication. Never before have we conducted so much business and navigated so many relationships in a written medium.

When someone reaches for that caps lock key, they are emotional and they want to holler at someone. They want the text to holler for them. And it does! We add the emotion back in when we read it.

Think about it — we lose information when we type an email message and that information is put back by the recipient, using clues from the text. Things like italics, bolding, case and punctuation, in addition, of course, to the word choices in the message, try to convey a multi-dimensional interpersonal communication over a single, written channel. The emotional content of emails is often (some might say always) misinterpreted by the recipient.

Except, perhaps, when we unleash the fury of caps lock.

Using my un-experience I have developed a simple 4-point list so that you, too, can be a successful blogger:

1. Post a lot. If you don’t post a lot you won’t be successful, period. Post no less than several times per day. When in doubt post an “open thread” or post about how you are too busy to post.

2. Pretend you have a theme, even if you don’t. So name your blog “Math Blogger” or “Sex Blogger” or “Evolution Blog” or some name that makes people think you have one and only one main theme. Then post whatever you want. It’s not having a theme that’s important, it’s making people think you have a theme.

3. Be hot. If you are hot, put your picture on your blog. Better yet, be female and hot. No amount of clever, intelligent posting can make up for being hot. If you aren’t hot, only post pictures of you that make you seem hot. Again, it’s not the reality that’s important here.

4. Shamelessly self-promote yourself all the time. Go to every trendy conference, befriend other A-list bloggers, get pictures of yourself with famous bloggers and ruthlessly shove your persona down Twitter and Facebook and every other social meme that erupts. You’re not a blogger, you’re a brand!

I’m just kidding. I don’t feel at all sorry for myself. I have no idea why some people get jillions of readers and jillions of comments for writing ordinary and obvious things. It’s a cult of personality that is impossible to predict.

We just finished remodeling our basement and I had my buddy Shane from SED come over and punch everything down all pretty. I don’t even need to show you pictures of my basement, this very nicely organized phone/cable/network box is all you need to see!

I decided to support the One Laptop Per Child project. You buy 2 and they send you 1 and the other they send to a child somewhere in the world who needs one. I think it is nice that I can make a donation of technology to the third world and still get a nice little toy for my own child.

The laptop arrived today and it is really, really cool. It’s small, capable and fun! I think Myles is going to have a lot of fun with it and I’m going to make sure he knows that there is another one out there somewhere with a child using it who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity.

Dear CNN, fuck you.

Michael

This include lolife, starhouse observatory, slacker astronomy and raintribe. You can also view this aggregated feed as a pretty web page.

Here it is!
The Ultimate lolife RSS Feed

Their vehicles collided head-on Monday afternoon on snow- and slush-covered Hwy. 14 in Winona County, killing the 17-year-old Stiehl, the State Patrol said today.

As for the Rusert, 54, of Utica, Minn., he had “no apparent injury,” the patrol report said.

Airbags deployed in both vehicles. The patrol described both cars as severely damaged.

This is a pet subject of mine. How could any intelligent person drive a car in snow and slush covered roads and not wear a seatbelt? There is no rational reason to ever not wear a seatbelt. Driving is the most dangerous activity you participate in.

Then 35W fell and after the emotions settled we all had the same thought: OMG traffic is gonna suck. So what does MNDot do? They close another bridge! We lost one major bridge across the river, who wouldn’t immediately want to close another? After 35W MNDot apparently went on a mission to fuck traffic up even worse. They closed bridges, closed lanes, closed turn lanes — they did nothing to encourage the natural traffic flows that emerged after the collapse. Instead they tried to outthink it and they failed (and are still failing).

And now, with our traffic system in shambles, what do they do next? They start fucking up I394. Every rush hour, morning and evening, thanks to billionaire baseball team owners and millionaire baseball players, the traffic in and out of downtown is paralyzed on 394 due to the stadium construction.

It’s always easy to criticize and traffic issues can make people emotional. It’s also a convenient excuse to just claim that traffic is fucked everywhere, forever and welcome to Earth. It’s also possible, though, that we are making shitty decisions, underfunding our growth and undermining our economic potential because of the huge hole that we pour our time and gasoline into every day.

MNDot is the emperor of a rotten kingdom. Our roadway systems are fatally broken. Our approach to improving them is apparently intentionally highly disruptive. Our traffic control systems are designed to make congestion worse. Our public servants give no value whatsoever to the vast amount of waste that occurs when people sit for hours unnecessarily in their cars.

It’s broken and getting worse and apparently MNDot doesn’t really give a shit.

In the case of Weeds I went to the Weeds site, the Showtime site, I googled and I clicked and there was exactly zero (0) ways for me to legitimately buy an episode of Weeds (short of subscribing to a year’s worth of a channel on cable that I don’t want).

But, in the end, BitTorrent fails the convenience test miserably as well. You can find torrents for everything but almost none of them work.

I’ll never understand businesses that put barriers between their customers and their products.

–Rex Stout

This is a great radio show but the TV show version is really, really good, too. It seems to me, if you are willing to pay $2 for a cup of coffee or $4 to rent a movie, spending $2 to watch a really good show like This American Life is really a bargain. As I’ve said before, I don’t want to subscribe to Showtime but I am willing to pay for their content.

If a Christian man is kissing his date and it gives him an erection (often just the possibility of a kiss can do this), is God or his date being honored?

Yeah, I’m sure God is disgusted by the reproductive processes he invented.

Remember folks: God made sex fun! He invented the clitoris, for example. He invented erections. In fact, He made us the sexual beings that we are. You have a duty to repress it.

I can see why this scares the loony-toon creationists. They don’t at all like the idea that they are the product of a long line of horny sex. At least they say they don’t. Yet we see the same overlay of a sexual self on those people, the faithful puritans of the “family values” movement. They get into trouble fucking whores or being gay, too. Subconscious drives come into play.

It’s a fascinating subject, really, the interplay of the sexual self and the “normal” self, where our personal and social ambitions meet the hard, cold fact that we have been fine tuned over millions of years to be sexual creatures.

An in-between example is when you are in your car. You can scream and holler if you want, sing like an idiot, vent your every frustration, and only you hear it. Alone. Yet you are not alone when you are in your car. Your actions are part of a social fabric. So you can scream at the top of your lungs at that mother fucker who cut you off, but you are doing so knowing they can’t hear you. You would never say those things directly to them in person.

Something similar occurs online. This has been often noted. People say things online they would never say in person. They say things in manners that they would never use in person. We are, in a sense, different people when we are online. The other side does this, too. The recipient of our communications interpret what they read with an overlay of what they perceive and invent, basically, in terms of the tone and attitude of the message.

I have been a major participant in this. I have written emails I shouldn’t have, posted messages I shouldn’t have, used the wrong tone, provoked, condescended to and antagonized.

This is my news years resolution. I am a fairly nice person in person. I am generally very diplomatic. I abhor negativity and for the most part avoid conflict. I look for win-win situations and try to get people on the same side of the table.

So it’s a weird thing, to a) “misspeak” online and b) to have innocent things over-interpreted in terms of tone, always, it seems, to the negative. Taken together, I can be a bit of an asshole online.

When I think about this, on the one hand, I don’t mind rustling feathers. I like giving people shit. I like debating and I don’t mind if it gets rough. But I do think it is important that the general vibe of conversations be respectful. With intellectual debate, the point is not that it be a punching match. Ideas have to be the focus.

I heard on the radio that Aldous Huxley was asked on his death bed if he had anything to say to the world and he said “Be kinder.” That sounds like good advice to me and I am going to try to put it into practice.

The other quote I am going to attempt to take to heart is from Serenity.

I should tell you, so that you don’t waste your time… you can’t make me angry.

http://gallery.mac.com/lolife

At right is my current book stack. I’m reading the top two and looking forward to the rest. I just acquired all of the fiction in the last couple of weeks, having run out of fiction. I have many other unread books laying around, but these are my immediate interests. I’m also reading Introduction to Cosmology by Barbara Ryden for my cosmology class.

I love books.

My alternative medicine friend said that extract of elderberry is an example of an effective alternative medicine. I found the study he referred to on the subject:

Randomized study of the efficacy and safety of oral elderberry extract in the treatment of influenza A and B virus infections.

Zakay-Rones Z, Thom E, Wollan T, Wadstein J.
Department of Virology, Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, Israel.

Elderberry has been used in folk medicine for centuries to treat influenza, colds and sinusitis, and has been reported to have antiviral activity against influenza and herpes simplex. We investigated the efficacy and safety of oral elderberry syrup for treating influenza A and B infections. Sixty patients (aged 18-54 years) suffering from influenza-like symptoms for 48 h or less were enrolled in this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study during the influenza season of 1999-2000 in Norway. Patients received 15 ml of elderberry or placebo syrup four times a day for 5 days, and recorded their symptoms using a visual analogue scale. Symptoms were relieved on average 4 days earlier and use of rescue medication was significantly less in those receiving elderberry extract compared with placebo. Elderberry extract seems to offer an efficient, safe and cost-effective treatment for influenza. These findings need to be confirmed in a larger study.

First of all, let’s assume this study is correct and that elderberry extract is effective medicine. That’s science, right? We did the study, the extract is effective, it’s real science and real medicine, right?

But what about the fact that Orac and others will have been calling it “woo” until now, dismissing it as junk peddled by quacks. Oh wait, but it works!

My point is somewhat subtle here so let me be explicit: alternative medicine should not get, and currently does get, a free pass from having to prove that it works. Medicine should be evidence based. There is nothing wrong with and everything good about using scientific studies to determine the efficacy of medicine.

But some go too far and assume that all alternative medicine must be bullshit. This is an assumption. If extract of elderberry can work it’s possible that other “alternative” remedies also work.

I do think “woo” is a big danger. Too many people believe really dumb things. It does undermine real medicine when people’s ignorance and superstition gets unwarranted acceptance. So I don’t disagree with Cairnarvon or Orac and I wouldn’t even be writing about this except that I have a friend who believes that he does work based on evidence that helps people using alternative medicine and that got me thinking.

I love this show. It is smart, funny and “adult”, meaning they talk like I do and address mature themes.

But it is totally fucking lame that Season 3 is not available on iTunes. Somehow these TV execs just can’t seem to pull their heads out of their asses. I’m not going to subscribe to Showtime. I am going to download Weeds from iTunes, like I have for Season 1 and Season 2.

I also like Heroes. I purchased the last season on iTunes as well. Now, due to heads-up-asses TV execs, Heroes is no longer on iTunes. So I am Tivo-ing it for free. Hey, guys, great thinking! Less revenue! Was that your plan?

PUT YOUR FUCKING CONTENT ON ITUNES!

The problem with alternative medicine is that it is not subject to this methodology. You’ll notice that if you buy a echinacea, for example, it makes claims on the bottle and then has a little warning that says these claims have not been proven or verified in the same way as pharmaceuticals.

Furthermore, things like acupuncture and chiropractic have often been proven to be ineffective.

So what’s at work here?

First of all, the placebo effect is well documented as being effective. If I give you a pill and tell you it will make you feel better, if you believe me, you will feel better. Placebos are good medicine in that they create favorable outcomes for many, many people.

Alternative medicine, taken in the worst light, probably acts as a placebo. And in that way, there is really nothing wrong with it.

But my friend makes more substantial arguments. His concern is holistic, meaning his goal is for people to actually be healthy. If, for example, you don’t exercise and your diet is shit, Lipitor will treat your high cholesterol. It won’t make you healthy. In fact, it enables you to be less healthy. He maintains that western medicine, in this case, has an effective drug but it does not have the right answer for getting and keeping people healthy.

He also feels that the statistical basis of “evidence based medicine” too often makes claims that are later invalidated. This is, in fact, true. Researchers continually confuse correlation with causation. They find barely significant results and get big headlines. Later, there are new headlines with contradictory results.

I don’t know what the answer is. Clearly modern medicine is indispensable, effective and necessary. Less clearly, but perhaps importantly, alternative medicine yields positive outcomes (a fact) and looks at health holistically, something sorely lacking in modern medicine. Your doctor should perhaps insist you get on the treadmill, get off the fast food and actually live a healthy lifestyle instead of relying on a pill to make it all better. A pill, I’ll add, that can have tangible side effects.

I’m as ready as most scientists to reject alternative medicine as complete bullshit. But my friend treats people who get better. He understands health in the big picture. He also knows when modern medicine is the correct approach. It makes me wonder whether there isn’t something we could learn from alternative medicine if we were a little more open minded.

1. If you don’t consider yourself attractive, you don’t post your photo on your profile. Instead you use some clever avatar.

2. If you think you are unattractive except in specific photos, you choose a photo that makes you look as attractive as possible. There are tons of people who are not hot who have profile photos that look hot.

3. If you consider yourself attractive, you always post your photo everywhere. Flickr, for example, is full of self-portraits by pretty people.

It’s #2 that I find most interesting. People want other people to think they are hot, even if they are not hot. I consider myself in this category too!

For many, many people seeming to be hot is the next best thing to actually being hot.

Let me add that I’m not a shallow, superficial person and I don’t really care if people are hot or not. It’s hardly a noble attribute. In fact, it confuses me how important it is to some people.

So here is my question to you: would you rather be ridiculously hot and of average intelligence or ridiculously intelligent and of average hotness?

An unrelated question: would you rather be rich and unhappy or poor and happy?

A Scranton woman who allegedly shouted profanities at her overflowing toilet within earshot of a neighbor was cited for disorderly conduct, authorities said…Her next-door neighbor, a city police officer who was off-duty at the time, asked her to keep it down, police said. When she continued, the officer called police.

What is it about some cops that makes them complete fucking assholes?

“I believe this is an irresponsible use of the veto pen. I hope the House can garner enough votes to override the President.” –Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore.

“Unfortunately, I believe that some have given the president bad advice on this matter, because I believe that supporting this bipartisan compromise to provide health coverage to low-income children is the morally right thing to do. I hope that we can muster enough votes to overturn this veto.” –Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

“This is an important program with bipartisan support, and I’m committed to a responsible extension. … Any long-term extension must include an effective plan focused on enrolling children who currently qualify but who for whatever reason are not signed-up, anything less is irresponsible.” –Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., R-La.

When liberals and conservatives agree on something, it’s probably a good idea. And if it’s a good idea, Bush will be against it.

Because Jon Stewart is wrong, Bush is really, really, really, really stupid.

We spent a week in Clifden, in County Galway, Ireland. It was the 30th annual Clifden Arts Week. Tea and Sympathy (a band I am in) had a gig at on the last night of the event. We rented a couple of houses and a bunch of us Yanks went over and had a hell of a time.

Clifden is a cool place with a good vibe. There is an old Irish feel nicely balanced with a younger more liberal overlay. Fun pubs, good food, cute little shops, surrounded by the very beautiful Connemara countryside, which is, on the one side, lakes and bogs and on the other, huge rocky hills. Clifden sits on a tidal bay that is filled and emptied by the tides. About 5 miles down the Sky Road is the sea itself, dotted with nearby islands.

One of our friends has a great little cottage on Turbot Island, a mile off the coast. The island is small, has no cars and only recently got electricity. There is a small, old graveyard there and about 8 houses. We spent a few hours on the island, walking the hills, the shore and laying on the long grass in the graveyard, disturbing the dead with our laughter.

The last night of the Arts Week culminated with a parade, some aerial acrobatics, fireworks and music. We played in a pub just off the square and the place was packed and we had a great time.

There’s lot to tell and share and I may even get to it some day. Check out my flickr pages if you want to see more photos (once I get them up there!).

Cheers!

Wear your fucking seat belt!

I’ll be posting more photos and travelogues as we go along. On Sunday night we are playing a gig in Myrtleville and then we are heading up to Clifden.

Sara Brami

Ophelia Among The Flowers

We miss you Sara.

To me, the sign of an honest debate is when small little areas of agreement are forged along the way. Many, many times I will concede points or agree with general sentiments even as I disagree with a broader point. I do this for 2 reasons, one, I am honest with myself and I’m not arguing for arguments sake, so I don’t take a partisan or opposition view on every little issue. I’m honest. Two, it’s a show of good faith in the debate that I’m not going to argue the sky is green just because you say it is blue. I’ll concede the obvious and my hope is that my opponent will concede the obvious, too.

The debates I tire of, like my recent outbursts at Say Anything, are the ones where no middle ground is sought, where nothing is ever conceded and where the goal is to trounce and not to engage. It’s no longer valid debate when the ideas because secondary to gamesmanship.

In addition, in a many-against-one hogpile, which I can’t imagine is fun for anybody except the most petty amongst us, you are damned no matter what you do. For example, I was called a coward if I didn’t come back but a loser if I did! There was no action I could take where the hooligans wouldn’t accuse me of being wrong.

I regret at times that I don’t ignore the retards and engage with the rational ones. There were a few comments that had honest questions with an honest possibility of debate. Those voices, unfortunately, are drowned out by the assholes who are looking for blood and honor from the mob.

Not one of the cowards at Say Anything have commented on my many liberal rantings here at lolife.com. I guess they get scared when they are not in a pack. I suspect, with the wonders of google and technorati, they may someday appear. Be kind to them.

BTW, I didn’t learn a single thing over there. Not one new piece of information. If a liberal says the sky is blue, we’d get a long lecture about how at night the sky is black, clouds can make the sky gray and near sunset at the horizon things get a reddish hue. Liberals can not say anything true, ever, at Say Anything. That is why I shan’t be reading or commenting there anymore.

Fascinating article. Two planes collide and 70 people are killed. There was one overworked air traffic controller working 15 planes: he made 118 radio contacts with them, and he was guiding another plane into land.

The father of 3 of the victims of the crash later murdered the air traffic controller.

Now 4 people from the private air traffic control firm have been found guilty of manslaughter.

There’s also on article about it on Wikipedia.

All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.

- Douglas Adams

Courtesy of Rosio Pavoris .

Clockwork Unable to Avoid Awards

MINNEAPOLIS, MN — Clockwork Active Media Systems (www.clockwork.net) has once again been selected as one of the “Best Places to Work” by the Minneapolis/St Paul Business Journal. This year, the award was a complete accident.

I suppose I should start a blogroll one of these days…

Paul Myers, better known as the science blogger Pharyngula, has been sued for libel by Stuart Pivar, author of Lifecode.

Pivar, a wealthy art collector, alleged Stephen Jay Gould buddy and Renaissance-throwback science hobbyist, published Lifecode in 2004.

Type-A asshole turns legal system on people with opinions. WTF.

The WiReD article concludes with:

Pivar’s case is clearly empty. And given his wealth, he can undoubtedly afford better legal advice. So what’s the deal? I’m guessing that it’s just a PR stunt. What better way to sell your book than get the blogosphere boiling, in the hope that the lawsuit becomes a full-blown — and wholly undeserved — controversy?

This is indeed scary. Either the guy is a clueless loser, suing someone who didn’t like his book or he is a clueless loser trying to generate interest in his book.

I hope the legal system and the market punish the crap out of said clueless loser.

In the height of your glory, when the world is gathered around you to listen to your wisdom and benefit from your experience…

be humble.

Take ‘em out, boys!

Cool, I’m finally in the top half million blogs! Look out Boing Boing, I’m taking you out.

Seriously, how someone who is obviously smarter than PZ and prettier than Phil can not be a complete Internet superstar, I’ll never know.

Rise up, people, rise up and link to me! They may take us off their blogroll but they’ll never take…OUR FREEDOM!

I think this is mostly true but I also think it misses some very important points:

1. It’s better that people are buying water than buying soda. A bottle of water is healthy and a soda is unhealthy. We don’t seem to have a problem with people paying $1.29 for a Coke, but for some reason we see it as a waste of resources to provide a healthy alternative. The expensive part of getting me a cold bottle of water out of a vending machine is the bottle, putting it in the bottle, getting it nearby and keeping it cold and readily available. Getting a drink of water, for free, in downtown Minneapolis is not convenient nor probably sanitary. It’s my decision if I want to pay for the convenience of nearby, cold, purified water.

2. Aquafina, and most bottled water, is processed with reverse osmosis. This is a very cool process that make for very pure water. It is no big deal at all if they use tap water as the input into the reverse osmosis machine. The water produced by reverse osmosis is vastly more pure than the tap water going in.

I drink filtered tap water at home. I drink filtered tap water at work. I don’t mind buying a bottle of filtered tap water every now and then for $1.29. I think there are downsides of the water boom and we should put pressure on governments and companies to provide pure water ubiquitously for free. We should make all distribution processes, whether for water or Coke, as environmentally efficient as possible. That’s obvious.

There are problems but they are solvable. We should not necessarily be upset that people are willing to spend money on convenient, purified drinking water instead of just buying another Coke.

Texas crowd kills passenger in vehicle that struck child

AUSTIN, Texas – A crowd attacked and killed a passenger in a vehicle that had struck and injured a child, police said Wednesday.

Police believe 2,000 to 3,000 people were in the area for a Juneteenth celebration when the attack occurred Tuesday night. The man who was killed had been trying to stop the group from attacking the vehicle’s driver when the crowd turned on him, authorities said.

The Austin Police Department identified the victim as David Rivas Morales, 40. The child was taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

A judge “threw out Wilson’s 10-year sentence and amended it to misdemeanor aggravated child molestation with a 12-month term, plus credit for time served, and he would not be required to register as a sex offender.”

But the Attorney General doesn’t like it:

Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker said Monday afternoon that he had filed notice of appeal, arguing that Georgia law does not give a judge authority to reduce or modify the sentence imposed by the trial court. He said he would seek an expedited ruling from the Georgia Supreme Court.

Maybe Mr. Thurbert needs some consensual oral sex.

Another issue I have is that I forget that I AM ASIAN. Seriously. I forget that I don’t look like you other white people. Maybe that’s why I hate dealing with immigrant Asians because they always ask the same questions: “Are you Chinese? You’re not? Because you look Chinese!” I never know what to say. Is there a blood test that I can take to find out? The other question is always: “Are you married to a white man?” (Yes.) I don’t know why the questions are always the same. Is there some kind of Asian Adoptee survey going on that I don’t know about? Because if there is? I’VE ALREADY TAKEN IT.

Now she certainly sounds like a reasonable person and the analogy of a host at a party maintaining some sort of enjoyable environment for the guests and the responsibility of the guests to defer, somewhat, to the host is a good one. I get it.

But something in me still is uncomfortable with it. It is a big, fat license for people to “moderate out” those things that make them uncomfortable. The all-powerful blogger can pick and choose who has a voice and who does not.

You see, I don’t trust people to handle severe criticism well. We all tend to take things personally. We are all convinced of our own good intentions but suspicious of the intentions of our adversaries. This is human nature.

We are all capable of ignoring the assholes. I skip far more blog comments than I read. I’m not convinced I need help choosing which comments to read. While there are obviously trolls and assholes out there, there are also a lot of thin-skinned people, both bloggers and commenters, who get way too emotionally connected to these debates.

I’d personally rather wade through comment noise than miss perhaps provocative posts that made someone uncomfortable. We’re grownups.

I’m not saying that moderation is always bad, but I think our guiding principles should be first about commenting respectfully and secondarily, if at all, encouraging bloggers to delete comments.

1. Take them out physically. We don’t need guns to hog pile on these guys. Disarm the mother fucker. 10 guys could have rushed this dude and 8 of them would probably have lived. You can die cowering or you can die fighting. (NOTE: Lord knows, I may die cowering. We can’t predict how we would behave in these situations.)

2. Take out the celebrity. I don’t give a fuck who this asshole was. I don’t need to see him psychoanalyzed on TV all day. I can imagine crazies out there preparing the documents we’ll all pore over after the next crazy mass murder.

3. Have them kill themselves first. I know it is callous and bizarre to say it, but this guy should have committed suicide prior to killing those 32 people, not after. Yes, it would be better to reach him and save him well before that. But when we get to this stage, suicide is better than mass murder. In terms of public policy, I’d rather encourage a few more suicides than a few more mass murders.

#1 above is what I can’t get out of my mind, though. Just like airplane hijackers get mobbed by passengers now, when someone starts shooting like this we have to instantly mob them. The goal of everyone nearby should be to take him out as soon as possible by any means possible.

Can anyone name a single funny person on the Right?

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

–Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford University, 2005

From 10 things you never knew about Steve Jobs.

People want to believe this stuff for some reason. I don’t believe it at all and yet I am still a Libra in many ways. I suspect that I just relate to those parts of my personality that are Libra-like when discussing astrology. If I were some other sign, I would relate to the qualities of that sign. People are complex and we all probably have attributes related to all of the signs of the zodiac.

This is why many people believe their horoscope as well. They ignore those parts that don’t ring true or don’t happen and remember those parts that do. So you read a horoscope that says a friend will have bad news and you’ll have a happy surprise. If those things don’t happen, you don’t really think about it, but if they do you say “Wow, my horoscope was true!”

One trick you can do is read someone their horoscope but actually read one for a different sign. Same thing: they’ll pick out the “true” stuff and ignore the not true stuff.

From an astronomical basis, astrology is bullshit as well. I did a little calculation comparing the gravitational force of the other solar system bodies with that of the earth. Here they are in decreasing order of influence:

Body    Force
Earth 100.00000000%
Sun     0.24077994%
Moon    0.00125292%
Jupiter 0.00001312%
Venus   0.00000752%
Saturn  0.00000095%
Mars    0.00000029%
Mercury 0.00000010%
Uranus  0.00000003%
Neptune 0.00000001%
Pluto   0.00000000%

So on average the Sun has 0.25% of the gravitational influence on you as the Earth does. The moon has 0.001% of the influence. And those are the STRONG ones. Jupiter, which is the biggest planet and fairly close, has 0.00001% of the influence as the Earth.

The notion that these minuscule forces are going to affect whether you have good luck today or not is daft.

“If a vegetarian refused to scan hamburger, that wouldn’t make the front page,” she said. “But because the word ‘Muslims’ comes up, suddenly it becomes news.”

I’m not sure this is true. I oddly agree with many right wingers on this issue because it is so damn simple: do not try to get a job which includes duties that you are unwilling to perform. This has nothing to do with Islam, in my opinion. I hold the same opinion of Christian pharmacists who won’t dispense prescriptions for religious reasons or vegetarians who won’t do their jobs. Either do your job or get a different job.

This is not any sort of infringement on religious freedom nor is it discrimination. The job is X and either you do X or you should look for another job. The same rules apply to everyone.

We talked a bit about my discussion with the young earth creationist. He said that he reads the historical parts of the Bible as history, the poetry as poetry, the metaphor as metaphor, etc. The Bible has all of these things. If you want to treat the Bible as absolutely literal you miss most of its teaching. He used an example that Jesus (or God or whatever) said “I am the rock”. So, is God made of granite? Is that the literal interpretation? Of course not, it’s a metaphor. Another example was that after God created Adam and Eve, the very first people, the serpent spoke to them. How is it that a serpent and these brand new people spoke the same language? A literal interpretation of the fall from grace is retarded — a metaphoric interpretation is rich in meaning and in teaching.

A little Googling led me to this article on biblical literalism and he makes some good points about the topic as well.

My point? It is literally impossible to interpret the Bible literally. Such attempts strip the teachings of their true meaning. The ass-backwards attempts of religious fundamentalists to interpret the creation of the universe, the creation of humans, the flood, etc. as literal, scientific truth are turning their backs on the Word.

The fact that I’m an atheist does not likely cause these people to agree with me, I’m sure!

First of all, I don’t think kids should drink and do drugs. I did it, you did it, but no one in their right mind recommends it, just like we don’t recommend a lot of other stupid shit we all did. Parents need to exert their influence and make sure their children make good choices.

But what strikes me funny is how people treat marijuana so much differently than alcohol. You can drink beverages with low alcohol content, such as beer and wine, or you can drink beverages with high alcohol content, such as hard liquor. No journalist in their right minds would write an article about hard liquor having more alcohol than beer. It’s obvious, known by all and not newsworthy in the slightest.

So what if pot is stronger now? It may very well mean that people smoke less of it, consume less tar as a result and it may thus have an overall health benefit. Instead of smoking a joint or doing bong hits they use a one-hitter. (Not that I know anything about this stuff.)

Reports like this are good information, but my fear is it will lead people to think that prohibition is a good thing, and it’s not. No one, ever, anywhere is talking about the prohibition of alcohol again. Why? Because it was ineffective and was the genesis of organized crime in America. It put huge dollars into the black market and it did not stop people from drinking.

The same is true of marijuana. The only rational, life-saving, crime-preventing, money-saving strategy is to legalize, or at the very least decriminalize marijuana.

Head on over and harass the crap out of him.

Faith is an absolute virtue. You have faith in what you believe. I have faith in what I believe. David Koresh (sp?) had faith in what he believed……Faith is a virtue…what you have faith in may not be virtuous (sp? again…)

I’m wondering what is so virtuous about faith. Let’s use an example. I do have “faith” in science because obviously I can’t personally recreate every experiment ever done. But my faith is based on the idea that I could if I wanted to. For example, in one of my physics labs we redid a lot of famous experiments. Here is my lab report on measuring the charge of the electron. I don’t need to have “faith” on the charge of the electron, I did it myself. Thus, my faith in science is faith in the process and the people and it is underwritten, if you will, with the knowledge that I could personally verify the experiments (even though doing so is impractical).

So what is faith? If we ask the dictionary it is “confidence or trust in a person or thing” or “belief that is not based on proof“.

My faith is science is based on the former: I trust scientists and the scientific process. Your faith in God is based on the latter: in spite of the lack of evidence, you believe it anyway.

I’m not necessarily convinced either of these is a “virtue” (moral excellence; goodness; righteousness).

But, unfortunately, he is a complete and utter failure, and a prick to boot. He has utterly destroyed Zimbabwe. It used to export food, now it is on the brink of famine. It’s economy has collapsed and it has rampant inflation.

I’m not expert on Zimbabwe but I do agree, in principle, that white ownership of all of the arable land is untenable. Like South Africa, the transition to a more representative government and some redistribution of wealth was probably necessary. But what Mugabe has done has obviously not worked and he has hurt all of the people of Zimbabwe in the process.

I think he has been absolutely corrupted by power and/or is completely insane or perhaps both. I wonder when the people of Zimbabwe are going to take their country back…

A few things struck me about our debate. First of all, the guy isn’t dumb and he is not just spouting dogma. He has thought about it, read about it and feels he is extremely informed on all sides of these issues. He thinks science is intentionally blind to the influence of design. Here is a quote:

Actually I was once in that place and was emotionally revolted by the idea, but after about a year of letting it settle I started looking and was astounded at the way I had been brainwashed. It took several years more before I could actually see the case for a young earth, but it is indeed there. Because mainstream science is so inbred, incestuous in fact, it SEEMS to all fit together. What has happened it that anomalous evidence is ignored.

So here is a religious conservative with radical scientific views, rejecting entire disciplines of science as quakery. And here I am, a social and political liberal who always sides with the establishment when it comes to science.

I, of course, think this dude is batshit crazy. These folks start with a conclusion, that God is involved in our every day lives, and project it on everything. Anything that contradicts the Bible is wrong. Scientists are atheists who “MUST believe in evolution because they would otherwise lose intellectual respectability. Therefore they are not open to the evidence for creation.”

It’s amazing to me that someone can look around this amazing world that science has created for us and still call scientists frauds who purposefully ignore evidence to support their idealogical beliefs.

But only, of course, in those areas addressed by scripture. For some odd reason they don’t quibble with electromagnetism or chemistry. No, it’s just geology, astronomy, cosmology, paleontology and biology they have a problem with, thanks to the insane young Earth theory and ID.

But, their minds are made up and no amount of direct evidence or scientific consensus will ever convince them. The Book was written and that is the end of the story.

WTF.