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.

My hope is that we get rid of these policies of extremes: zero tolerance, no negotiation, maximum return, lowest cost. We seem to value even ridiculous extremes at times.

With this is the rejection of false either-or’s. Conservative or liberal, the environment or industry, socialism or capitalism. These turn debate into contests instead of a process of discovering the truth. What if the government enacted (or repealed) some thing that made a big positive difference to everyone involved. Would you care which ideological category it belonged in? These bi-polar arguments are contrived and unproductive.

My hope is that our generation puts aside some of this pointless vitriol and tries to actually solve problems. Unfortunately, I’m not optimistic.

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.”

Standard sweeping generalization disclaimer: I’m talking about sentiments in general. There are vast numbers of exceptions to these generalizations. I realize that and don’t need to be reminded.

There are several highly divisive and contentious debates going on right now and they are all driven by the intolerance of rural America. These are the three G’s – god, guns and gays and, although it fits neatly into the first G for psuedo-pious rural American, abortion.

Here, then, are the 4 deadly sins of rural America:

1. They hate all non-Christians, especially atheists and muslims and they would be perfectly fine doing away with the separation of Church/State so long as Christianity is the religion.

2. They think we want to take their guns away. In the meantime those guns are used 99 times out of 100 to harm someone they love through domestic violence, suicide and accidents. Gun use for self-defense almost never happens in rural America.

3. They don’t like the gays. Except maybe Ellen DeGeneres, but she doesn’t count. This is the voting block that is stopping gay marriage in this country — rural folk who would be the least effected by it. No one can think of one tangible, secular reason for opposing gay marriage. See #1. These people can’t even interpret the Bible correctly. Most of them have never actually read the Bible. But they are pretty sure that it says God hates fags.

4. Abortion. No one can give a tangible, secular reason to criminalize abortion, either. See #1 again. For some reason they are pretty sure that God gets mad at us if we kill fertilized eggs, even though 30% – 70% of fertilized eggs never make it to birth regardless! The notion that a fertilized egg equals a person is not true nor is there a shred of evidence to suggest it is true. An acorn is not an oak tree, right? Would a law against killing oak trees apply to acorns? No, of course not. This is religion in disguise, imposing their inept Biblical view on the rest of us. Abortion should be discouraged. Unwanted pregnancies should be avoided. It does harm women emotionally when they have abortions. Abortions are not good. But they absolutely should not be criminalized. Rural folk have abortions, too, they just lie about it.

The sum of these things is the Great Sin of Rural America – intolerance. They are intolerant of all people who are not like them. The other day I had a run-in with a land owner while trying to retrieve a rocket. At one point his passenger yelled at me to “go back to the city where I belong”. This is 40 miles from Minneapolis. It is astounding to me that some redneck who lives practically in the suburbs of Minneapolis would resort to that. In his mind I was different from him (my hair is a little long these days) and he immediately tried to use that difference as a tactic to disparage me.

This Great Sin of Intolerance is prevalent everywhere in rural America. If you are the slightest bit different in the slightest way, you are ostracized for it. This is not just school yard stuff. Adults who are gay, atheist or even just lean to the left are targets to the mob mentality of small-minded, uneducated, sheltered bigots.

Am I intolerant towards people who are intolerant? Yes I am. Don’t bother trying to catch me in that trap. I am accepting of all people who are accepting of all people.

I am born and lived until I was 5 in a tiny North Dakota town. I spent my formative years in a slightly bigger North Dakota town. I have hunted and fished my whole life. I know and love many rural Americans. It is hard in a sense to have finally realized that I am an urbanite. I deplore the intolerant mindset that dominates rural America.

I’m starting to realize that ethnic and territorial conflicts like the Bosnian War, for example, are driven by the exact same mindset. There is an “us” and a “them” and if you are not with “us” you are with “them” and intolerance begets violence begets war. Same thing with the American Revolutionary war. Fuck, many rural Americans in the southern states are still fighting that war!

In spite of what you’ve just read, I love rural America. It’s where I am from. But I’m taking the gloves off. I’m sick of this intolerant bullshit coming from people who should know better and I’m calling them out.

To the right you see a frame grab of the launch and the altitude and velocity plots from the PerfectFlite MAWD altimeter. It hit 7292 feet (2222m) and 650 mph (291 m/s). It went out of site on launch so we didn’t witness the parachute coming out, even with the binoculars. But once it got low enough I could see that everything had deployed correctly. It landed about a half mile away in a field owned by a very unpleasant man. I won’t get into that story…

The data matches the simulator from RockSim very well. It went about 10% lower than predicted, but that makes sense. I use a few O-rings and tape and things that mar the perfect surface that RockSim calculates with. The velocity plot matches surprisingly well. The altimeter doesn’t measure velocity so you have to compute it numerically using the time and altitude. That is why the data looks noisy.

The descent velocity was about 35 mph, which is a tad faster than they normally recommend, but this rocket is all G10 fiberglass and pretty hard to damage. Everything was in great shape when I got it back.

Here’s the (short) video of the launch:

It was a nice launch season but too short! Now it’s time to build some stuff for next year…

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What if, and I realize it is a big if, Obama’s health insurance reforms work. What if we all do measurably better under a cooperative approach legislated by the Democrats. Would conservatives be OK with it?

I deplore double-standards and I ask myself — what if we could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that tax cuts for the rich, for example, was the best approach to raise the median standard of living. What if conservatives were right and tax rates are north of the sweet spot for the best return into the US Treasury. I would be DELIGHTED. What if the Bush approach to Iraq had succeeded in 6 months, like they hoped. DELIGHTED. My goal is not that the Left “wins”. My goal is that we get better at government so that we get the most bang for the buck on our shared interests such as national security, the economy, health care and education.

I’ve said this before, but some people think: the Left was mean to Bush so we can be as mean as we want to Obama. You have to remember that we were all hopeful for Bush in the early days. He ran on the compassionate conservative thing and I honestly hoped he’d be successful. He was immediately deeply partisan in every single thing he did. Many of us were shocked. Bush earned our hatred. He really did. He earned it day after day for 8 years.

It is completely possible that Obama justly earns people’s hatred. If he is highly unsuccessful in measurable ways like Bush was, he’ll have earned our disapproval. If he is highly political, highly partisan, shady, obtuse and, accordingly to some, criminal like Bush was, he’ll have earned our hate. But he hasn’t been any of these things. The jury is still out on most of his policies, but he has not been a bait and switch like Bush and he has been an honest broken on the issues. I realize that Left and Right disagree on the prescriptions but even fuckwits like Glen Beck should be able to see that Obama is a straight shooter.

The hysteria on the Right is manufactured and they’ve done so because “it worked” that we all hated Bush. Even the Right hated Bush by the end. But the ideologues are jumping the gun on Obama and they are losing their credibility as a result, except to the extent that they preach to their own little retarded choir.

But frankly, if Obama can’t do this job well, I am seriously worried for us. He is as smart and as well-informed as individual we have seen in that office. He is no raging liberal. I think the vitriol we are seeing 9 months into his term is unfounded.

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!

Need to respond to Joe DeMasi’s letter in the Times-Record (“Obama on education: Superintendent should have stood up to bullies,” Monday).
We were some of the “objectioning” parents to our good dictator’s speech on Sept. 8. We are very glad that our school administrators had enough sense to recognize propaganda for what it is and not subject our children to it. Thank you, Mr. Koppelman and Mr. Denault, etc.
If the great “O” wasn’t on such a grandstand against everything our great nation and her people stand for, no one would have had an objection to this, but the “O” is out to have everyone bow to him as others in fascist Europe did a few decades ago.
Anyone who keeps tabs on the “O” and his minions watched the various versions of this speech morph over the course of days into what actually came down the airwaves on Sept. 8. It surely didn’t start out that way and that is where the objections came from! He had yearlong plans drafted to be used by teachers and administrators to use to track how the students from grades one through 12 could help Obama promote and reach his goals, which is totally against our democratic foundation!
If the great one wanted to do something like this, it should have been in the evening on live broadcast so parents could sit with children and dispel his myths as he was spewing them, and then our children could have watched his speech and gotten the real meanings from us, the parents, not some public school people who are by the very nature of public school funding going to slant toward the liberal socialist called “O.”
Not cool on his part or on the part of his goofy secretary of education, who had a hand in the whole thing. This president is a joke, but I hold the office in the highest regard, not the man. If this guy was credible, there would not have been 1 million people gathered in D.C. for the rally against his socialist policies and his leftist loonies that he brought with him to the city and the hill. Of course, you won’t find that reported in any mainstream media, and they try to discredit us as fringe when it is really they who are the fringe of the American culture.
No, Joe, we the people think our Valley City school administrators did the right thing and did not show this propaganda to a captive, impressionable audience with no parental supervision on what was coming over the airwaves.
Micheal Olauson
Valley City

What a fucktard. Jesus Christ, dude, just off yourself now and don’t pollute the gene pool further. You are an idiot of titanic proportions devoid of a single cogent thought. You are a racist, a moron and a traitor and I hope you die in a fire.

1. Take your time loading the motor and stop and ask if you have any doubts whatsoever. There is exactly one correct way to load the motor. The first flight of Canis Minor failed because the motor CATOed because I loaded it wrong.
2. Make sure things that shouldn’t come apart can’t come apart. I lost a (broken) camera because the nose cone came loose when it shouldn’t have.
3. Drill holes in any bulkheads in the booster foreword of the motor. I destroyed Canis Minor because I didn’t do this and it lawn darted.
4. Make sure your deployment strategy takes the rocket design into account. I destroyed Canis Minor because I didn’t do this and it lawn darted.
5. Use wadding and deployment bags. I melted the streamer on the Supersonic Aura and broke a fin on landing. I also burned a parachute.
6. Turn off the electronics if you are working on your rocket on the launch pad. I inadvertently set off the ejection charge when I remove the payload bay to add wadding.

I think that’s it so far. These are mistakes I will not make twice!

I love it. It is really awesome. Here is why.

1. It’s not backlit. This is a huge feature. The “digital paper” technology is very cool and very pleasing to read. You can read even in low light conditions and it uses very little power.
2. It’s small but not too small. My laptop is too big to curl up with like the Sunday paper. My iPhone is too small. The Kindle is perfectly sized to hold in one hand with a cup of coffee in the other. It’s very lightweight as well. I’m currently reading Anathem, which is 900 pages long and weighs almost 3 lbs. The Kindle weighs less than 1 lb. Reading Anathem on the Kindle is much more pleasant than manhandling the large tome.
3. It’s magic. The New York Times shows up automatically. I don’t do anything, it’s just there, ready and waiting every day.
4. It appeals to the bibliophile in me. It is dangerously easy to browse and buy new books. And the device makes me want to read more. It’s a very pleasing little device, in a very book-like way.
5. It’s not a computer. You can browse the web if you want, but there are far less distractions than a computer. No email, no IM, not Facebook or Twitter. When you read, it is a book and only a book.

The price point for the Kindle seems too high to me but the cost of the books is quite economical, I paid only $8 for Anathem and it downloaded in seconds. The Kindle is a great gift for the bibliophile in your life, including you.

It’s my usual profanity-ridden chatter about politics. It’s called Taxes and the Nanny State.

Take a listen and post a comment with your thoughts.

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.

Incident Details: On Saturday, August 15th, 2009 the rocket Canis Minor was launched on 2 occasions from the North Branch launch site of Tripoli Minnesota. The first flight was powered by an Aerotech J350W motor and achieved an altitude of 6554 feet above ground level. Deployment was successful and the vehicle was recovered undamaged. All systems performed nominally.

The second flight was powered with much less thrust using a single grain Cesaroni “G” motor. The purpose of the launch was to try to set the Tripoli MN “G” motor altitude record. An altimeter was onboard with the sole purpose of recording the altitude. Electronic deployment was not used. Instead the flight utilized motor ejection to deploy the parachute. A Rocket Hunter radio transmitter was also flown as payload to assist in recovery.

The vehicle launched successfully and just after apogee a puff of smoke was seen by most observers on the ground. The parachute did not deploy and the rocket was aerodynamically stable and ballistic when it impacted the ground. The impact was not observed because it occurred in a corn field and the rocket was not recovered. The Rocket Hunter signal was not present and the rocket is presumed to be entirely destroyed.

Incident Cause: While all systems appeared to have functioned normally the flight plan failed to take into account a bulkhead separating the motor assembly from the parachute bay. The design of the rocket explicitly ruled out using motor ejection for recovery. The motor ejection gasses never entered the parachute bay and thus the parachute bay was never over-pressurized and failed to deploy.

The responsibility for the failure lies in the launch design and preparation team (LDPT), which failed to take the rocket design into account when preparing the vehicle for launch. The LDPT consisted solely of Michael Koppelman and he is entirely responsible for the incident. While he is not particularly happy about totally destroying his rocket, he thinks this shit is fun and he thoroughly enjoyed himself.

Photograph of the last flight of Canis Minor courtesy of Rohn Blake.

There’s a lot of rhetoric floating around regarding climate change and the solutions being proposed to address the problem.  I wrote this piece to give readers a starting point from which to consider the problem and the mitigation programs under consideration.

This article is meant to provide a brief discussion of Climate Change and the two major proposals being advanced in the US congress.  It is meant to provide a starting point for those trying to understand the global warming problem and the two proposals under serious consideration as possible solutions.  The intricacies and likely effectiveness of the respective proposals are beyond the scope of this writing

Global warming is a reality and the consensus of every major scientific academy and society in the world is that global warming is being accelerated by human production of Green House Gasses (GHG’s), primarily carbon dioxide.  GHGs are a by-product of fossil fuel combustion (petroleum, coal and natural gas).  These gasses are emitted into the atmosphere and act like a green house for the entire planet, preventing energy from being reflected away from the earth.  This results in rising global temperatures. 

Data models suggest that global temperature may rise as much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century.  Although this doesn’t sound like much from the perspective of the thermostat in your living room, such a change will result in major economic, meteorological and environmental effects.  The scientific and economic consensus is that these effects will have a detrimental impact on global economies and many species of life on the planet.  Scientists and world leaders agree that we need to do something to curtail global warming or we may face devastating environmental and economic consequences by the end of this century.   

The two solutions that have been discussed in the US Congress are the imposition of a carbon tax or implementation of a cap & trade system.  A carbon tax would tax the source of the GHG’s at some point in the supply chain.  Presumably, the revenues generated by the tax would be used to develop cleaner energy sources or technologies to “clean up” the emissions associated with fossil fuels.  The carbon tax has the advantage of being relatively simple to administrate.  We know how much GHG’s are emitted by burning particular fuels.  As such, the tax could be imposed anywhere between the well-head or mine and the final consumer.  The problem with a flat carbon tax is that it will be passed on to the consumer and therefore tends to be regressive in that it impacts lower income earners more severely.  Further, a tax does not impose any hard cap on emissions.  As such, an tax on green house gasses may not serve to actually reduce emissions.   

A Cap & Trade system by comparison would set a GHG reduction target for major GHG emitters ( such as power plants and large industries like steel, glass and concrete) to be accomplished by a certain date.  This is the CAP portion of cap & trade.  Emitters would then be required to reduce their emissions by a certain percentage over time. The specific reduction target for each emitter would be established by reference to a baseline.  If the EU (European Union) model is followed, at the beginning of the program, large emitters would be granted a number of carbon credits (equivalent to 1 ton of Co2) equivalent to their baseline GHG production.  Emitters could also earn credits by funding approved carbon reduction projects.  Some examples include developing carbon sinks through re-forestation, sequestration projects or development of non-fossil fuel energy sources.  The idea is to establish a carbon credit trading system that allows emitters to buy or sell carbon credits on an exchange.  This is the Trade portion of cap & trade.  To the extent that emitters fail to meet their Cap, they could be faced with having to pay large fines or having to buy carbon credits on the open market sufficient to bring them into compliance.  Cap & Trade is premised on the idea that the market will reward those who develop clean energy technologies or otherwise reduce their GHG output and penalize those who don’t.                     

The proposed solutions above are discussed in their simplest terms and this article is by no means meant to be a comprehensive discussion of the intricacies or merits of either proposal.  That said, the ultimate conclusion is that both will result in higher energy costs to the consumer.     

The problem we face as a country and a planet is the conflict between doing the right thing by reducing global GHG emissions and coming to terms with fact that doing so will result in higher energy prices and tend to reduce our standard of living, at least in the short term.  As we are all painfully aware, higher energy prices impact virtually every aspect of the economy and result in higher costs of production.  These costs are ultimately passed on to the consumer.  These consequences are not likely to be politically popular with industrial concerns or consumers.  Addressing global warming creates a unique problem from a political perspective as the real impact of our current behaviors may not be realized for years.  Furthermore, the impact of reducing emissions in this country may have little or no impact if other major producers don’t follow suit.  As such, the problem really calls out for a global solution.  Unfortunately, barring an imminent catastrophe, it seems probable that the US and other major producers of GHGs lack the political will to change their behavior sufficiently to have a major impact the problem.  It is our duty as citizens of the world to support our political representatives such that they have courage to enact a meaningful GHG reduction program that can be emulated by and participated in by the rest of the world.

It went 11,511 feet above ground level and reached about 1200mph. It landed just less than a mile away. It traveled about 20-30 mph horizontally, which is about right because the wind was blowing pretty good.

The plot shows the altitude from the altimeter. The main chute came out at about 600 feet. It landed at 30 ft/s (20mph). Perfect flight! Too bad I didn’t see very much of it!

When I dismiss the Bible as “the writings of superstitious Bronze Age mystics” I am not trying to be disrespectful, I’m trying to be accurate. A depiction of the authors of the Bible as holy men in direct contact with god is fanciful in any rational sense. The same is true with the notions of heaven, hell, original sin, divine conception, resurrection, Doom’s Day, and so on. They are indistinguishable from fiction. None of it meets any of the standards that we have for considering something “believable”. Every religion has as much direct evidence as the ancient Greeks and Romans had for Zeus and Venus. I’m not trying to be unkind, I’m stating an obvious fact.

But I recognize that this fact still befuddles many people. They believe in god and they believe in an afterlife and they are not at all ready to listen to what I’m saying. That’s fine. I’m not on a mission of conversion. I think it is important that people think rationally — religion is a corruption of the mind in this sense. It helps keep the door open to dogmatic, arbitrary and wholly unsupported thinking. Furthermore, such beliefs are considered to be “off the table”. Under the guise of respect we treat fanciful mythology as perfectly acceptable.

Why? The more you think about it the more it boggles the mind.

I must add my standard atheist disclaimer: I don’t know if there is a god or not and I don’t know what happens when you die. I’ve calculated the odds of each and found the likelihood vanishingly small. My calculation is subject to change. There is no faith in my position.

(This started as a comment.)

Ball is arguing that it is folly to outright dismiss religious thinking as incompatible with science. He thinks that religion is here to stay and deeply ingrained and that we have to strive for peaceful coexistence. Harris on the other hand, similar to my last few blog posts, thinks that religion is a dangerous mindset that should be taken head-on.

I agree with them both. I agree more with Sam Harris but I am keenly aware of the difficulties surrounding (what appears to be) attacks on people’s sacred beliefs. Even though I think all of our beliefs are fair game, in a sense, many people feel they never have to defend their religious beliefs. So any “attack” (and by that I mean a debate of ideas) is seen as hostile. That undermines our argument if our goal is to convince people to open their minds to our ideas.

Each of these guys had a great quote (among others) that I thought was worth sharing. Sam Harris describes Christianity accurately but severely:

Jesus Christ, a carpenter by trade, was born of a virgin, ritually murdered as a scapegoat for the collective sins of his species, and then resurrected from death after an interval of three days. He promptly ascended, bodily, to “heaven”—where, for two millennia, he has eavesdropped upon (and, on occasion, even answered) the simultaneous prayers of billions of beleaguered human beings. Not content to maintain this numinous arrangement indefinitely, this invisible carpenter will one day return to earth to judge humanity for its sexual indiscretions and sceptical doubts, at which time he will grant immortality to anyone who has had the good fortune to be convinced, on Mother’s knee, that this baffling litany of miracles is the most important series of truth-claims ever revealed about the cosmos. Every other member of our species, past and present, from Cleopatra to Einstein, no matter what his or her terrestrial accomplishments, will (probably) be consigned to a fiery hell for all eternity.

On Mr. Ball’s account, there is nothing in the scientific worldview, or in the intellectual rigor and self-criticism that gave rise to it, that casts such convictions in an unfavorable light.

Ball, who I agree with in the sense I described above, is a bit desperate and outmatched, I think, but he does sum up a view of agnostics that is well said:

I share your view that many of the alleged ‘facts’ that comprise most religious belief – the existence of a deity (or deities), that deity’s capacity to intervene in the world in supernatural ways, the whole paraphernalia of miracles, afterlife, saints, sin, absolution, virgin births, resurrections – are not just outside of science but fundamentally incompatible with a scientific view of the world. And while some agnostics might insist that we cannot ‘know’ that a god does not exist, this does not compel us to give the ‘for’ and ‘against’ possibilities equal weight. We shouldn’t imagine things into being without good reason to do so.

Yes, of course, science if flawed. It’s wrong a lot and it’s political and manned by humans so as fallible as all of us are. But it is science itself which finds and fixes the errors and scientists and their students who invent the things that become the life-enriching advances of the future. Science, as Carl Sagan said, is a candle in the dark.

And yet this most proven and successful enterprise in human history, that provides the very foundation of all that we do, giving us literally life itself, is the enemy to some! And to others it is merely just one other view, equal to all other views, including the uninformed ravings of astrologers and clergymen.

Science is under attack by people with an agenda that is mystical in nature. They are religious people, “New Age” people, “woo” medicine peddlers and other op-ed nut cases. They demean science and applaud quackery and they lead us away from the mindset which has given us everything we have.

Atheism is the natural worldview of the scientific mind. Oh, I know, many great scientists were theists. Religion is the last stand of mysticism and superstition in human psychology. But it’s not turtles all the way down, we are not special creatures destined to be cuddled by a friendly superbeing in heavenly comfort and nothing lasts forever, not even the universe. It is incredibly arrogant to think that we alone are eternal and happily reunited with our loved ones forever. It’s nonsense. There is no spoon. It is quite peaceful once you accept it.

Be here now.

Religion is a gateway drug to an arbitrary and dogmatic world view that tangibly hurts us day after day in countless issues from birth control to foreign policy.

The only reason we talk about atheism at all is because we are a society ridiculously soaked in religion. In many parts of the US it is just assumed that you not only believe in god but that you are a Christian. In many Muslim countries the state and the church are the same thing. It’s practically or literally illegal to be an atheist. So yes, of course we talk about atheism. It’s important.

A wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Do you think this is a racist quote? What is your definition of racist?

As usual, there is what she said and then 9 million interpretations of what she said. If you take her literally at her word, you’d take the meaning to mean “a Latina women has better judgment than a white male”. If you take the most unflattering and literal opinion, I do think you could call that a racist statement and I do think we would call a white male who said the opposite a racist.

But I think such an interpretation is wrong and out of context. She is talking about people who struggle as minorities compared to people in the majority who don’t face challenges related to racism or what I could call “economic racism” — considering certain people to be worthy of lower positions in the social hierarchy. I think people who have struggled economically and people who have faced the adversity of racism may very well have better judgment than someone lucky enough to have not faced those challenges.

Do I think she is a racist? Of course not.

I haven’t yet read up on the nominee herself or the views of her supporters or critics. But obviously I believe that the demographics of the judiciary should reflect that of the electorate. I know there are many qualified people of all races and genders. The notion that this choice is gratuitous is insulting to all thinking people. If you concede that it is possible for women and minorities to be qualified you have to give this woman the benefit of the doubt before you disqualify her.

Rush Limbaugh has already proven himself ignorable on this issue. I fully expect the Right Wing to go hysterical. It appears they have already started.

I loved the headline on fark.com:

Rush Limbaugh weighs in on the Sotomayor nomination, asking for calm from the Republican party, and a straight up or down vote on her nomination. Just kidding, he calls her and Obama racists and warns of the impending race war

But I am seriously getting bummed out with the inept notion that any problem has a legislative solution. It effects me most as a small business owner. New regulations popping up all the time to fix problems that have nothing to do with me or my business. Politicians are experts at taking a good intention and turning it into a bad law. The pandering to the electorate is sad and counter-productive. Listen to me, guys — the electorate are retards. They don’t have the slightest clue what the fuck is going on. They just want free stuff and they want no bad stuff to ever happen and if it ever does, god dammit, someone should do something about it.

I’ve said it many times before, but we have to get out of this 2 party system. The Republicans have the most fucked up agenda in history and the Democrats are trying to pass laws to prevent us from stubbing our toes. We do not have the time or the money to fuck around with all this stuff.

Obama, prioritize these people, keep them on track and get rid of the notion that the government has some extraordinary power to fix every problem. They don’t. The government should work on big issues that can’t be handled by the private sector. We can’t save children from every danger and we can’t have a thriving economy if you regulate us all because of 0.000001% of bad apples.

Get it together, mother fuckers. Focus.

It’s ironic that the author quotes published open questions in solar system research as evidence for his non-theory! You aren’t being told it except that…you are!

They are just using the same techniques they use against biological evolution — any unanswered questions can easily be answered by saying God did it! They don’t have a theory, they have a tactic of subverting honest scientific puzzles into dogmatic dog shit like “creation astronomy”.

If you think the solar system is younger than a few billion years, you are embarrassingly uninformed. You have to ignore virtually every branch of science to embrace a young earth model — geology, paleontology, astronomy and chemistry to name a few.

I built a Performance Rocketry Little Dog Dual Deploy. I have a little video which describes the rocket on youtube. The first launch was a disaster which resulted in a cato. (cato is rocket dork slang for a CATOstrophic (sic) failure of the rocket motor.)

The 2nd launch was (mostly) a success! I was going to launch with a J motor but because of clouds I used an H motor instead, so a quarter of the total impulse. According to the sim it should have gone about 2000 feet, but it ended up going about 1500 feet.

The rocket wobbled a bit early in the burn. The streamer was supposed to pop at apogee and then the main chute at 700 feet but they both came out shortly after apogee. I think the payload pay just fell out of the booster when the nose cone was blown off. But as failures go, that was a pretty good one, as the rocket descended nice and slow and landed in view.

I was happy with the launch because I loaded 2 motors and they both worked fine. My altimeter worked, too, and fired the deployment charges. My failures were the wobble, which might have been solely because of the slow speed, and the fact that the main deployed too early.

It’s fun.

Obama may be criticized for trying to thread the needle on this one. He doesn’t want to start a witch hunt on the previous administration. Yet he wants to end torture for 2 reasons: 1) it’s inhumane and endangers our service-men and -women and damages our reputation abroad; and 2) it is not effective.

The Right is picking on #2 — it IS effective they say. To quote Dick Cheney: so? Lots of illegal and immoral things are effective. The vast majority of us don’t do those things regardless of their efficacy. We prefer to hold our head up high.

So why is the Right taking this position? I guess a pro-torture agenda is consistent with their general policy of government utterly dominated by the military. It also works well with their nation-building agenda and their preemptive military aggression strategy. In fact, I’m surprised that they try to finesse the issue at all! Just come out and say it: if we think you have information we need, we will torture you to get it. Just say it, you pussies.

PS – I found it interesting, in light of my previous post, that the above-linked Powerline post starts by being complimentary towards Obama.

There are people I almost instantly like and respect and I’ve been thinking about why that is. I’ve narrowed it down to 2 things: they are intelligent and they are fair-minded. The first criterion is obvious — I’ve always liked smart people because I like to be challenged and I like to learn. I am also constantly seeking self-betterment. So intelligent people are usually people I am drawn to.

But that is only true if they are also fair-minded. Being fair-minded means at least 2 things: they acknowledge the interests of others and the leave room in their thinking to be wrong. They are authentic, genuine people who are confident enough to be willing to listen and willing to be wrong. Often they demonstrate this by giving a nod, if you will, to dissenting opinions.

This is why I didn’t hate John McCain. Some people are like lawyers and they never give an inch under any circumstances. John McCain, among others, was always willing to be fair-minded (with the possible exception of his Presidential campaign).

So when I debate I always try to give in a little, as a show of good faith and to show, hopefully truthfully, that I am not a brainwashed Leftie. Here, I’ll do it right now: I think government should be as small as possible (but no smaller). I think American needs to vigorously defend our interests abroad. I think law-abiding citizens should be able to own and collect virtually any gun on earth. This list goes on. There are many issues that Conservatives hold dear that I agree with. I am not a brainwashed Leftie.

Let’s take Obama. Obama is not my own, personal Jesus. He is less liberal than I am, he is part of a large party that I often disagree with and he will for sure do things that I oppose. I admire and respect him greatly but I expect to disagree with him often. He is not perfect.

Now take as counterpoint to this your average Right Wing retard such as Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck or the entire Fox News network. They guys are shameless hypocrites. They have no credibility whatsoever because all they do, all the time, on every issue, is try to spin it to make the Right look good and the Left look bad. No one should take these guys seriously. On the other hand, someone like George Will, I would argue, is not a brainwashed Right Wing kook. He’s wrong a lot, IMHO, but he is largely intellectually honest and he’s not going to carry the party line if he disagrees with it.

Now back to micadelic. I virtually never get the slightest nod of fairness from this guy. I saw him tweet to the effect that the pirate/hostage situation was a failure of Obama’s! Someone explain that logic to me. Rush Limbaugh criticized Obama and the US military for “shooting teenagers”. Had Bush been President, they would have been terrorists for whom death was too good for. Under Obama they are innocent teenagers. Why would anyone still listen to that asshole?

Micadelic admired Obama before he was a candidate and hated him as a candidate. How does that happen? He repeats the same half-truths that Limbaugh and Beck circulate. His position seems to be that if liberals believe it, it must be wrong. Ann Coulter must be proud.

So here’s my advice to micadelic, Hannity and every other rapid Right Winger. When you debate, agree with some stuff the other side says. Every once in a while, pull your head out of your sphincter and agree with some obvious shit. I do this all the time. I agreed with Bush on immigration. I agreed with McCain on torture. I’m not so stupid that I think that every single thing Bush thinks is wrong. Hell, even dumbshits like Hannity are right every once in awhile. When they are, I admit it.

Be fair-minded. The very best words to start with in a debate are “I agree with you that…”.

Try it sometime. And maybe I won’t hate you so much.

As to foreign policy, I really think if you are focused on bows and smiles you are dangerously distracted. Those things don’t matter one bit. Obama is setting a new tone. That is the strategy. Smiles and bows are, at most, tactics in that strategy and are more probably just one man’s natural reactions. I agree with a strategy of friendlessness and fairness. I think we should and I expect we will negotiate strenuously for our own best interest. But acting nice is totally allowed.

My peeve, as mentioned in a couple previous posts, is this: Bush was in office 32 times longer than Obama has been. If Obama continues a Bush philosophy, like the bail-out or the budget, the Republicans complain. I’m sorry guys, you lost your right to complain about the bail-out and the budget when your party did the same thing. When Obama changes a Bush policy, such as torture, the Right is quick to call it catastrophe. Listen to Cheney try to tell us that torture is necessary.

The Right is gleeful that they can be the opposition party now. That’s fair. But they are such ‘tards about it. Their QB lost 32 quarters of football. Obama has won 1 quarter of football, IMHO, but even if you think he lost, it’s the 1st quarter. Are you really going to start the drama about America dying inside already?

I hope Obama is successful at getting the economy going. That’s not one man’s job but I think he is a great person to have in the chair right now. I hope Obama is successful at making the world a safer and more peaceful place. I hope his plans for energy independence are actualized and effective. And, if so, I expect the Right Wing to cry that the sky is falling the whole goddamn time.

Such is life. We have a better man at the helm now.

Obama is obviously going for a “speak softly and carry a big stick” philosophy. He is not going to budge on the issues that are important to the American people. But he can do that more effectively if he is thought a kind and fair man by the people he is negotiating with.

Do I even have to explain this to you?

Yes, apparently I do:

You tell ‘em, Hillary.

It is fucking ridiculous that the goddamn Right Wing thinks we are going to forget the last 8 fucking years. If you disagree with the approach Obama is taking — GOOD! That means we might be on the right track. Your credibility has been obliterated by your steadfast support of the most ineffective retard ever to hold the office of the President. So how about you shut the fuck up for at least a year or two and see what happens when honest, educated, intelligent , well-informed and yes, imperfect people run things for a while.

And, by the way, the fact that 70% of the US and 100% of the world thought Bush was a complete failure does not mean that you get to be just as mean to Obama as we were to Bush. We were mean for a reason. The molehills that the Right is trying to turn into mountains right now don’t count.

And let me also add that I am not giving Obama a free pass. He will succeed or fail and I’ll call ‘em like I see ‘em. But right now he is just starting to get his agenda going and it is intellectually dishonest as well as stupid to claim the goddamn sky is falling when we are still in the first 100 days.

Hundreds of alcohol overdose deaths occur annually. There has never been a single recorded marijuana OD fatality.

According to the American Public Health Association, excessive alcohol consumption is the third leading cause of death in this country. APHA pegs the negative economic impact of extreme drinking at $150 billion a year.

There have been no documented cases of lung cancer in a marijuana-only smoker, nor has pot been scientifically linked to any type of cancer. (Don’t trust an advocate’s take on this? Try the fair and balanced coverage over at Fox.) Alcohol abuse contributes to a multitude of long-term negative health consequences, notably cirrhosis of the liver and a variety of cancers.

It’s not even close. If you were going to pick one of these to prohibit, it would be alcohol. Yet we prohibit the safer one! Drug wars are running wild in Mexico, there are non-violent hippies taking up jail space in the US and we are turning our backs on taxing a multi-billion dollar industry.

WTF.

(belated thx to dez for the tip!)

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.

Prohibition creates violence because it drives the drug market underground. This means buyers and sellers cannot resolve their disputes with lawsuits, arbitration or advertising, so they resort to violence instead.

Violence was common in the alcohol industry when it was banned during Prohibition, but not before or after.

Violence is the norm in illicit gambling markets but not in legal ones. Violence is routine when prostitution is banned but not when it’s permitted. Violence results from policies that create black markets, not from the characteristics of the good or activity in question.

The only way to reduce violence, therefore, is to legalize drugs. Fortuitously, legalization is the right policy for a slew of other reasons.

Nearly 65,000 people have signed an online petition protesting President Obama’s scheduled May 17 commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, saying the president’s views on abortion and stem cell research “directly contradict” Roman Catholic teachings.

It’s hard for me to even comment on this. How weak is your goddamn faith if you can’t hear THE PRESIDENT OF THE FUCKING UNITED STATES SPEAK AT YOUR UNIVERSITY.

Jesus Fucking Christ, these people are idiots.

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!

We remodeled our basement and in preparation we boxed up a lot of stuff. The basement is finished now and the boxes are down there ready to be unpacked. One of them has all of my old beginning astronomy books in it and I opened it up last night to see my old friends.

It was almost like looking at old love letters. I felt sad and nostalgic. These were the love letters that started my love affair with astronomy. After my girlfriend got me a telescope, I became an absolutely voracious amateur astronomer. I was part of the “every clear night club” — heading out to observe every clear night, regardless of the temperature, often observing in temperatures -15F (-26C). I eventually built an observatory, spent a fair amount of money on a great telescope, mount and CCD camera and started imaging and eventually doing photometry.

But that’s not all! I joined the Minnesota Astronomical Society, the AAVSO, the AAS (eventually) and the ASP. I started doing research in the department at the University of Minnesota. I started taking calculus and physics classes, eventually getting a BS in Astrophysics.

I got the bug big time.

When all of this started I was single. Eventually I got married and had one kid and then another. I started a new business along the way, which grew from $0 in revenue to $5M and from 4 people to 35. So my life, during my quest to learn as much as I could about astronomy, changed a lot. Suffice to say, I am no longer a member of the “every clear night club”. I’ve also satisfied a lot of my initial curiosity about astronomy. I got a BS in Astrophysics because I wanted to know how math could explain stars. I took classes on stars, galaxies, cosmology, computational physics — it was awesome. I learned (to some minor extent) about things like thermodynamics, quantum mechanics and relativity. I could read entire paragraphs of Chandrasakar and understand it!

I also got gigabytes of data at my observatory. I plotted light curves, made periodograms and Fourier spectra. I wrote code to reduce data, learned IRAF and presented posters at professional meetings. I even got involved with Slacker Astronomy!

I’m not bragging, in case that is what it seems. I still know much less than every PhD student of astronomy in the world. I’m no genius and am probably not particularly gifted at astrophysics. But I love it and I loved learning about it.

But in some small way I burned out. The pressure of going to my observatory (which is 45 minutes away by car) while taking classes and going to meetings, all the while raising a family and building a business, was too much. Eventually my observing had to go — I couldn’t keep up with my classes and be up all night. Then, after I got my degree, I found I still wasn’t observing much, and when I did, I didn’t even bother to reduce the data.

What had happened to me? Did this love affair with astronomy die…?

The answer, I know, is no. There is a time for everything and there is nothing to be gained by trying to cram things in when it doesn’t feel right. I need to take care of my family and my business. In the meantime, I am exploring hobbies that I can enjoy closer to home. Someday…a day I look forward to very much…I will live in a place where my observatory can be in my backyard. Someday my kids will grow up, my business will be sold and I will be back in my mistress’s arms again, through the long, beautiful night.

On February 2nd I was doing some research in amateur rocket telemetry systems and one of the systems I looked at said that you needed to have an amateur radio (“ham”) license in order to buy it.

So I started looking into it and later that night I tweeted:

in case you didn’t think i was a big enough dork, i’m going to get my amateur radio (“ham”) license. For rocketry telemetry via packet radio

On February 17th, roughly 2 weeks later I tweeted:

I am a ham.

I had passed my Technicians test! On February 25th, I got my call sign:

Hi, pleased to meet you, MY NAME IS KD0GQX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s been a fun month! I now have a Comet GP-3 on my roof and a Yaesu FT-897 in my office. I’ve been playing around with APRS, packet radio and FM repeaters.

I’m also starting to work on the rocket telemetry stuff that I wanted to do in the first place!

I got a lot of funny responses but this one deserve special attention:

Thanks a lot, Chuck-o!

M.

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.

Says a Microsoft spokesperson:

We ran a study which suggested that the average consumer has open just over two applications [at any time]

They claim this will make their software more accessible to emerging markets. In reality, it looks like it will force people to pay more for the more sophisticated versions.

So why is this so dumb?

Because it costs Microsoft money, probably lots of it, to create, market and support a crippled version like this. They expended extra effort to make their software less capable. That is retarded. Only an MBA is capable of that level of stupidity.

After the very public failure of Windows Vista, one has to wonder why Microsoft still wastes so much time crippling their software.

PEOPLE, THAT IS RETARDED.

2. The GOP are still idiots. I don’t know about this whole “bail out” thing myself. I have no problem with people debating the merits of such actions. I think the true motivation of such an action is to instill confidence in the markets. Everyone involved in the financial industries wants the bailouts. They want government action. This is truly the most likely and best way for the bailout to work: if the markets gain confidence and in 4 years we are sitting on a big, growing economy again. But the GOP are idiots because Obama met with them, gave concessions to them and has been trying to build consensus across the aisle. The response in the House was zero support. Their first vote with a new President who is clearly trying to change the tone is partisan heads up partisan asses on the GOP side. The bill isn’t done. There is plenty of time to improve it in the process. The Republicans, though, to a man, choose to pull out their very small dicks and oppose it. Not one vote for working on it together. Thus, they are idiots, QED.

On the 36th anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, a man smashed his SUV into the entrance of the Planned Parenthood office in St. Paul this morning…”We think it’s intentional because of Roe vs. Wade,” Panos said. “He’s not saying much. He was praying or chanting when the officers arrived.”

Of course, Jesus is pro-aggravated assault. Duh!

Good on ya!

…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.

With that said, I predict that we will not see a flawless Obama presidency. There will be a multitude of Right Wing attack dogs trying to undermine him. He is not perfect and he will make the wrong call on some things. (He is to the right of me on many issues.) He is also inheriting 2 wars, a failed economy and an international reputation which has been tarnished. This is not going to be easy.

I also want to make a very specific point to our Republican friends: twice you elected George W. Bush to office and, especially in the early years, you were enthusiastic about his politics and policies. Almost all of you have since distanced yourself from Bush. So let’s be clear: you had your chance, your guy had the seat, you even had the Congress for a portion of that time. Your politics were a total and complete failure. So it would be wise, IMHO, to cut Obama some slack and see what the other team can do out on the field. Your high horse has been carted off to the glue factory so give it a rest.

And, while I believe that Bush and Cheney should be tried for their crimes, I don’t expect it to happen under Obama. They will now fade off, Bush to Alzheimer’s and Cheney to heart disease. Good riddance, you fucks. You have deeply harmed America and you deserve far worse than your remaining years will deliver.

And with that last bit of venom out of my system, President Obama, do your duty. We are behind you.

Like, you know, me. I’m an amateur scientist who enjoys launching high-power model rockets. The ATF, in their infinite wisdom, treats the motors that my rockets buddies and I use as explosives. This makes them hard to ship, hard to buy and hard to store. For example, I need to get an explosives permit from the ATF in order to by certain kinds of igniters, a device less capable of harm by far, than my gas grill.

The uninitiated should know that model rocket motors are ridiculously safe. Even if you put them on the ground and set them on fire, they just burn like a flare. Almost no one is ever harmed in the sport of high power rocketry, even people who make their own motors from raw propellent.

In terms of terrorism, these motors are just not that useful. You can buy, without a license, far more dangerous materials, including fertilizer and diesel fuel. You can buy 50 pounds of black powder at a sporting good store without a license. You can buy kerosene, which is literally rocket fuel, without a license. But I have to get a license to play with model rockets.

It’s insane.

Maybe if Obama reads my blog he can IM me from his Blackberry and I’ll convince him to make some calls. We’ll get this sorted out.

It’s not a bad article — he lists the health benefits of marijuana as well as the ricks associated with it. This is good stuff for people to know. My objection is that he encourages people to vote against more liberal marijuana laws based on the fact that marijuana has risks associated with it.

That’s not the criterion we use for making policy! There are all sorts of legal things with risks associated with them. Millions of ‘em. Gupta, if you want to give medical advice, fine. But it is insane to base your opinion on matters of policy, liberty and law solely on a medical opinion.

Booze is legal and prohibiting it was a disaster. It is completely wrong to prohibit marijuana for the exact same reasons and the minor medical risks of marijuana certainly do not trump these other more important arguments.

But it could be a great little box if Apple hadn’t screwed up a few major things. These include:

1. You can’t use a keyboard and mouse. It has USB and Mac OS X running inside of it, but if you don’t have a little white remote, you can’t operate it.
2. Nor can you use it for web/email/etc. Major fuckup.
3. It doesn’t have a DVD player in it. WTF? Those things cost like $80 and they are very slim. If their heads are not up their asses, the next AppleTV will have a Blu-Ray drive.
4. DRM.
5. The relative paucity of available movies and TV shows. There’s a lot, but it is a small fraction of what it should be.
6. The lack of other web content. Boxee might eat Apple’s lunch if they don’t get on it. We want to watch Hulu, BitTorrent, Flash — all of it.

With all that said, I love the AppleTV and it is a glimpse of things to come. We won’t talk about “TVs” and “computers” in the future, there will just be displays and things we show on them*. The network will certainly be the delivery mechanism.

It is getting more common for people to gather around a computer to look at photos or watch video clips. The giant TVs that people have these days are the perfect place to do that. In many ways, once again, Apple has realized this first. So the AppleTV is, perhaps, an imperfect step in the right direction.

* The ancient X-Windows system for Unix got it right by totally separating the notion of display/keyboard/mouse with the physical system. Linux makes use of this to this day.

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.

But I keep asking myself — what is so interesting about rockets? I can skip to the end of the book on this little hobby and see that I will never have the capital necessary to actually play around with the cutting edge of “amateur” rocketry (unlike Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and John Carmack). I’ll build and launch rockets and build and launch payloads, like video cameras or whatever, and then I’ll have done it all and I won’t need to do it anymore.

But the goal isn’t necessarily to do something that has never been done. Sometimes great goals are ones that do things that many people have done. It’s the whole thing about the journey and not the destination. It was the night before my last launch and I grabbed my wife by the shoulders and shook her and said THIS IS SO FUN. I was having a blast. It’s really fun stuff and I’ve thought a bit about why.

1. The Need for Speed. Rockets go fast. In fact, I was thinking about it and I don’t know of any other thing, period, that humans deal with, besides light, that goes faster than rockets. I’m working on a rocket right now that I calculate should go about 1.2 times the speed of sound. That’s over 900 miles per hour. What else do you know that goes that fast? This is a 2 foot rocket and it can go faster than every other thing I know of excluding multi-billion dollar air and spacecraft. That’s cool.

2. Math and Physics. For me, those are good words. Any activity I do which can involve math and physics is a good thing. With rockets you calculate various aerodynamic values to determine stability. Then, given the physical parameters of the rocket and motor, you can very accurately model flight behavior and predict altitude, velocity and acceleration. With cool software like RockSim you can design rockets and virtually fly them to try to optimize for altitude, payload or speed. So far the best I have is a design for a rocket that will go 20,000 ft. It’s basically a motor with fins at that point.

3. Electronics. I’ve not taken the step of total nerdery where I build electronics from scratch. Quite the opposite, I’m pretty much a beginner tinkerer and haven’t done much more than basic soldering. With rockets you can use electronics to deploy parachutes or to fire motors while in flight. You can fly payloads like video cameras, accelerometers, iphones and GPS. I imagine a world where high power rocketry meets the high-tech servos and airfoils of remote control (RC) aircraft. Rockets are getting more sophisticated and more capable as electronic components get smaller and cheaper.

4. Pyromania. Rocket motors are cool. The big ones are like the size of a fire extinguisher. The ones I’ve used are about the size of a nice Polish sausage. But you also fabricate ejection charges, to blow off nose cones and such. This is a black powder controlled explosion inside the rocket. So Myles and I will be going in the backyard to do some ground testing. This means blowing nose cones off of rockets with electronics. That’s fun!

5. Zen and the Art of Rocket Building. With rockets, beauty is functional. Rockets should be very smooth, very symmetrical, very aerodynamic , very strong and very easy to see. Building rockets is a little like building models but the fact that the thing will fly very fast and very high and be subject to very strong forces makes it more of an engineering project. Rockets are torn apart all the time, once one gets into high power rocketry. Building rockets is a slow and detail-oriented process that is quite satisfying, both on an aesthetic level and on an intellectual one.

6. The Final Frontier. The reason that Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and John Carmack are into rockets is because it really is the final frontier. Orbit is still the province of governments, as we speak. Can amateurs get fractions of the payloads into orbit for fractions of the cost? What would it take to get my iPhone into orbit? Can we design the necessary guidance to put a rocket into a specific orbit? Can amateurs get to the moon?

So, um, that’s why. I like to amuse myself and I find rockets very amusing. I’m going to launch some rockets and see what sort of fun stuff I can make ‘em do. Maybe I’ll be the first person to get an iPhone into orbit. Or maybe I’ll just have fun trying.

Throws Things At Sky

Except you can’t. Our government in their extreme wisdom spends a lot of money and a lot of effort making sure we can’t find certain substances that make us feel good. We are talking about people who would deny things to cancer patients in extreme pain and discomfort. They, including Governor Tim “Dumbass” Pawlenty, are more concerned about people abusing drugs than they are about relieving the suffering of people who are dying.

I’m not dying, thank God. I’m just pissed off that I feel like shit and that my doctor has a pill that would make me feel better and he won’t give it to me.

What I get addicted to, if I get addicted to it, is no one’s business but my own. Lord knows that millions of you are addicted to alcohol. The philosophical disconnect is gigantic. Alcohol, the most damaging drug known to man and an everyday killer can be safely and conveniently purchased. But if you want some pot or a Percoset, you have to go to the black market.

I propose we decriminalize every drug known to man. If people get into trouble, so what? People get into trouble all the time with all sorts of things. Are you my mom? No, you are not.

The DEA, the ATF, the FDA and my doctor are all idiots and I’m sick of it. And I’m sick of this cold.

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.

massdistraction caught me being a law-abiding pyromaniac.

I got out and launched some more rockets. Although it doesn’t exactly compare apples to apples, you can see on the image to the right that things either went very wrong with my initial iPhone launch or the GPS data I’m getting is screwed up.

The black line is a flight with the red iPhone rocket but instead of an iPhone I flew a standard altimeter (a PerfectFlite MAWD). The red line is the prediction from RockSim for that flight. You can see it matches almost exactly.

The green line is the plot of the GPS data from the iPhone and the yellow line is the prediction for that flight. You can see it doesn’t match at all.

One would be tempted to think that the time stamps on the GPS data is just stretched out or something, because it would look a lot more normal if you compressed it so it had a faster climb at the beginning and a descent rate like the other flight. But I just checked again and on the video it is a 74 second flight. That is 20 seconds longer than it should have been.

Thus, the only theory that makes sense to me is that the motor burned slow and long. From the video I tried to determine the velocity and acceleration of the launch and it matches the GPS data within uncertainties. So I think the GPS data is good and the problem was with the motor.

As a rocketry dork aside, I was using the Copperhead igniters when I launched the iPhone and I used the FirstFire igniters the 2nd time. I think the Copperheads did not work correctly or I used them incorrectly, because one other flight seemed to have a weird start with them.

I tried to fly both the iPhone and the PerfectFlite altimeter at the same time but I couldn’t get them both to fit in the payload bay. That is the next test I need to to.

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…

Thank you.

Finally, here is video of the 3 launches of my iPhone. The first one is the failed launch due to a motor failure. The 2nd is the one where I got all the data that I’ve posted. The 3rd one I got almost no data but the motor performed better as the flight seemed much more normal.

Sorry Elton! Don’t sue me, but I couldn’t think of a more appropriate song.

iPhone Rocket Launch and Interview (from MobileOrchard.com) from Mobile Orchard on Vimeo.

I’ve been meaning to put my video stuff together but have had some technical difficulties. I’ll get that finished up soon!

If anyone from Apple should stumble upon this: I want to be Apple’s Official Rocketeer! Make it happen, Steve.

I don’t know if I will, but if I go all the way and get the Level 3 Certification I can buy motors with 14000 N-s of thrust!

People tend to fly bigger and bigger rockets on the bigger motors. This is obvious, in a sense, because these rockets can’t be flown on smaller motors. For me, though, once my rockets are big enough to fly interesting payloads, such as iPhones and digital video cameras, I’ll be more interested in speed and altitude than bigger rockets. I don’t have the budget or the engineering skill to make really big rockets. I do have the technical chops to do some cool stuff with payloads though.

This is fun!

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.

He apparently thinks if he claims victory somehow it is his to lose. No, Norm, an automatic recount has been triggered and YOU ARE NOT THE WINNER YET. I personally hope we send you back home to reinvent yourself into a kinder, gentler piece of shit. Maybe you could become a Democrat again? The wind is blowing that way, you know.

I think it is a dying viewpoint — that same-sex marriage is “bad”– and these actions in these states will be reversed, for sure, no question about it, and the people that voted for them will go down in history as being intolerant and ignorant as did people who worked to deny rights to blacks.

(inspired by The fight over Prop. 8 goes to the courts)

It’s funny to me, though, that the general sentiment I’m sensing from the disappointed Right is that they need to hold on to their checkbook. They think that they will be paying for new spending in higher taxes.

First — the debt is $10 trillion. Our GDP is about $15 trillion. So our debt load is 2/3 of our GDP. That is getting out of hand. Our budget is about $3 trillion, so our income should be $3 trillion and thus our debt is more than 3 times our nominal income. We gotta get this house in order. We need to do it by growing the economy, running a surplus budget and paying down the debt. If, at my company, we had 3x our gross income in debt, I’d be shocked and worried.

We need to run a surplus budget. We have to do it. Some balance of less spending, higher taxes and growth of the overall economy is the solution. We can’t raise taxes so high that we curtain economic growth. We can’t cut spending so much that programs and services are starved to inefficiency. The liberal solution to growing the economy is investment in shifting the entire bell curve of the standard of living, thereby giving a return on that investment in the form of a more robust economy. The Right still seem to believe in trickle down economics.

Second — the Right doesn’t necessarily do better under Republican administrations! They think they do, because capital gains taxes do tend to be higher under Democrats, but one needs look no further than 8 years of George W. Bush to see that alone is not a good measure. Would you rather pay a little more on capital gains and have your economy not tank? I think you would.

I think the unwillingness of affluent Americans to pay taxes is one of the least patriotic things I can think of. They want to have the world’s most powerful army and they do have the world’s most powerful economy and they still can’t do the math the reveals how crucial progressive taxation is to our success in these areas. It’s vital, it’s working and rather than be grateful for the privileged lives that they lead, they whine about taxes. It’s sad, really.

So lighten up, Righties. You’re going to be fine.

The United States of America did the right thing. We made history tonight but more importantly, we chose an excellent man for the job.

God Bless America.

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!

I’m a capitalist. I’m not suggesting we tax at 50% or create a welfare society. Neither is Obama. The biggest untapped potential in our economy is realized when people transition from low-income to middle-income or from middle-income to high-income. When we move the whole bell curve, the whole bell curve moves! Amazing! So you rich folks get richer, too, when poor people get richer.

Morally, it’s always funny to me how, as individuals, we are offended if people call us selfish or greedy. Those are not qualities we want in the people around us, either. Almost all of us are gracious, giving and caring people. Yet somehow the Right can spit out “share the wealth” as if it was the most vile concept to ever cross their lips. How dare he suggest that we should be gracious, giving and caring people! Why, that’s un-American! Right Michele?

WRONG. It is possible to be a capitalist and a small-d democrat and still rise up to our shared responsibility to make possible a decent standard of living for our citizens. Those of us who do find ourselves making more than we need should feel lucky and grateful and willing to help others achieve it.

QED

She vowed – as she has many times — that if she and running mate John McCain are elected, they will nix such fat that’s tacked onto budget bills by lawmakers eager to win points back home– projects that “really don’t make a whole lot of sense” and have “little or nothing to do with the public good. . . things like fruit fly research in Paris, France.”

“I kid you not,” she declared with a chuckle.

First of all, these retards continue to act as if France is anything but a major ally of the US. The US won our revolutionary war due to France. Shut the fuck up with this France bullshit.

But far more importantly, anyone with any knowledge of biology can tell you the important role that the fruit fly has played. The research she is denigrating here is highly useful:

One problem: the research she chose to highlight as a waste of cash just happens to have borne some, well, fruit. And for special needs kids, no less. Among such projects: a 2007 University of North Carolina study that researchers said might be key to better understanding the root of autism spectrum disorders.

The quotes are from Scientific American which goes on to list McCain’s own desperate attempts to paint other scientific research and science education as wasteful.

I’m anti-pork. I think earmarks are a stupid way to do things. We should fix that system, no question about it. But it is un-fucking-believable that Palin/McCain choose to attack those few and inexpensive earmarks that actually make sense. Palin lobbied for the bridge to nowhere, for Christ’s sake. She should shut her mouth before she prematurely ends her career. Oh wait, Republicans celebrate ignorance and stupidity, she’s gonna be a superstar!

Sorry, I’m venting a bit, but the desperate weenies who are clinging to God, guns and John McCain annoy me.

Science IS politics. In the US, the federal government pays for nearly 100% of astronomy research.

Further, politics on issues involving science need to be influenced by scientists! Scientists have a duty, in my opinion, to speak their scientific opinion on the issues of the day. Not a right, a duty. The same is true of every industry, we need to hear from economists on economics and oil men on drilling policy. That’s just obvious. So when we hear from Phil Plait or any other scientist on science-related politics, thank them even if you disagree with them.

My suspicion is that 99.5% of the people that complain to Phil (and others, including me at Slacker Astronomy) are Republicans. They don’t like the views of their party or candidate trashed and they feel insulted that their views are being ridiculed.

Good! The prime fucking directive, as far as I’m concerned, is that you be able to articulate and defend your views. Otherwise answer “Don’t know”. ‘Cause if you are going to act like you have a valid opinion you better be able to tell us why that is so.

I know many Republicans who are not anti-science. But the Republican party as a whole is on the wrong side of many scientific issues. They pander to religious people and they ridicule the accepted views of science. They get what they deserve from people like Phil Plait.

It’s probably happening a little already, but science-minded Republicans should absolutely demand that their party jettison their anti-science schtick. Evolution is the obvious example, but the lunacy of young Earth creationism, hysteria about embryonic stem cells, denial of humanity’s obvious influence on Earth’s climate and the utter failure of abstinence-only sex ed to prevent pregnancy and disease are other examples where Republicans put ideology ahead of generally accepted science.

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.

He concludes the letter by talking about how the this nation has its head up its ass in regards to hemp and marijuana. He is, of course, completely correct. But I mention it because the media, in all of their stupidity, take his arguments and, by trying to be funny, expose the very ridiculous thinking he is arguing against. For example, one headline is “Quitting, and rolling a fattie…” and another “Millionaire puffs up hemp uses”. You can’t advocate for hemp or decriminalization of marijuana without some idiot calling you a stoner.

The US approach to the hemp issue is completely, 100% retarded. Yet regardless of who brings it up the pot smoking jokes come out, undermining the utter validity of the arguments. You can be a complete drunk, that’s A-OK, but mention marijuana and you are obviously some drug pusher.

So, fuck you, Andrew Willis, and your oh-so-funny headline. Thank you for taking us off the point once again.

On Palin:

I don’t believe she’s ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president

On the rat-bastard Republicans:

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said: such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is he is not a Muslim; he’s a Christian, has always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, “What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?” The answer’s “No, that’s not America.” Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion he’s Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

On the economic crisis:

I have especially watched, over the last six or seven weeks, as both of them have really taken a final exam with respect to this economic crisis that we are in, and coming out of the conventions.

And I must say that I’ve gotten a good measure of both. In the case of Mr. McCain, I found that he was a little unsure as to how to deal with the economic problems that we’re having, and almost every day there was a different approach to the problem. And that concerned me. I got the sense that he didn’t have a complete grasp of the economic problems that we had.

On McCain’s campaign:

I’ve also been disappointed, frankly, by some of the approaches that Senator McCain has taken recently — or his campaign ads — on issues that are not really central to the problems that the American people are worried about.

This Bill Ayers situation that’s been going on for weeks became something of a central point of the campaign, but Mr. McCain says that he’s a washed-out terrorist. Then why do we keep talking about him? And why do we have these robo-calls going on around the country, trying to suggest that because of this very, very limited relationship that Senator Obama has had with Mr. Ayers, somehow Mr. Obama is tainted? What they’re trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings. And I think that’s inappropriate.

I agree with Powell on this one.

Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.
So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

He also slams John McCain:

John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

So the Right is pissed off and Buckley offers, and the National Review accepts, his resignation.

One would be tempted to say the obvious except we don’t have to, Buckley does it for us:

I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.

Mr. Buckley is not alone among conservatives. Oddly enough, the conservative vote this year is for Obama.

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!

McCain thinks he can scumbag his way into office. Norm Coleman apparently thinks the same thing. When will they learn? Those scary ads about how scary the other guy is with wolves howling and facts set aside for sensationalistic lies DO NOT WORK.

There is exactly one thing McCain can do to stay in this race: stop talking about Obama and start talking about himself.

I seriously think McCain is losing it. He sounded like Palin last night in the debate, trying to get every issue into every answer. Obama was pretty so-so as well, it seems both those guys are tired.

Currently http://www.electoral-vote.com/ forecasts Obama getting more than twice the electoral votes as McCain.

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.

If you want the next four years looking just like the last eight, then I am not your candidate. But if you want real change – if you want an economy that rewards work, and that works for Main Street and Wall Street; if you want tax relief for the middle class and millions of new jobs; if you want health care you can afford and education that helps your kids compete; then I ask you to knock on some doors, make some calls, talk to your neighbors, and give me your vote on November 4th.

I DON’T want the next 4 years to look like the last 8. Obama represents a much, much better shot at that than John McCain. If people weren’t single issue voters or rabid ideologues, Obama would crush McCain. As it is we have to convince people that the party in charge of the last 8 years should not be in charge of the next 8. That should just be obvious.

A friend sent me this. We’ve all seen that Palin clip by now. I think it is maybe the first time that SNL was able to use a quote word for word and have it be absolutely hilarious. Jack is mad and he should be.

I would forgive Palin for having one bad moment. We all say stupid things. Lord knows micadelic is going to paste some Obama clip to insure proper balance. But with Palin they are ALL bad moments. I haven’t heard her say an intelligent thing yet, outside of her speech at the convention. She’s not quick on her feet, she’s not well-informed, she’s not highly educated and she’s not articulate. She would be a horrible candidate for President. With McCain being 72 years old, she is running for President. And thus the MaCain-Palin ticket is excluded from being a serious choice for your vote.

I know, I’m some big elitist because I want our highest leaders to be highly intelligent.

WTF.

Palin is doing the one thing that a VP candidate should never do — weakening the ticket. The Republican ticket consists of an old man who can’t seem to control his campaign and a woman who clearly doesn’t have a clue. The financial crisis on Wall St. is damning as hell to the incumbent party and I think we are at the beginning of a McCain tailspin to defeat.

It’s clearly not over yet, but the Palin love affair, with the exception of the most brain-washed pro-lifers, is completely over.

US President George W Bush has defended a rescue package to tackle the worst financial markets crisis for decades.
…
Mr Bush said the measures required the US “to put a significant amount of taxpayer dollars on the line…But I’m convinced that this bold approach will cost American families far less than the alternative,” he said.

When times are good the profiteers on Wall St. reap the benefits. When times are bad, instead of letting market forces adjust, all the rich folks suddenly become socialists. The government must step in with billions!

The real alternative, Mr. Bush, was tighter regulations to prevent this sort of catastrophe in the first place!

Here’s a quote from the above link:

If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.

Obama’s resume is fantastic. He is the most qualified candidate since Clinton, in terms of his intelligence, education and firm grasp of the issues. He has good judgment, good insights, he’s candid, articulate and personable. He’d be a great President.

People need medical care. It’s required in this day and age. Life is precious and we’ll all spend whatever we need to if we need to. So the market is guaranteed and health care providers have the actual services of value. In between consumers and these providers is a massive corporate for-profit bureaucracy that is trying to milk profits out of the system.

We should learn from France:

Americans often assume that when people get universal coverage, they give up their choice in doctors, hospitals and care. That’s not the case in France, Dutton says. The system is set up both to ensure that patients have lots of choice in picking doctors and specialists and to ensure that doctors are not constrained in making medical decisions.

In France, the national insurance program is funded mostly by payroll and income taxes. Those payments go to several quasi-public insurance funds that then negotiate with medical unions to set doctors’ fees. (Doctors can choose to work outside this system, and a growing minority now charge what patients are willing to pay out of pocket.) The government regulates most hospital fees. This system works collectively to keep costs down.

When someone goes to see a doctor, the national insurance program pays 70 percent of the bill. Most of the other 30 percent gets picked up by supplemental private insurance, which almost everyone has. It’s affordable, and much of it gets paid for by a person’s employer.

“There are no uninsured in France,” says Victor Rodwin, a professor of health policy at New York University, who is affiliated with the International Longevity Center. “That’s completely unheard of. There is no case of anybody going broke over their health costs. In fact, the system is so designed that for the 3 or 4 or 5 percent of the patients who are the very sickest, those patients are exempt from their co-payments to begin with. There are no deductibles.”

I couldn’t find the statistic, but I think we are the only G8 country without some kind of national health care system. Ask the Republicans and France is wrong, the rest of the world is wrong and the US is correct to pay more for a worse system because we fear government bureaucracies more than private bureaucracies. It’s nonsense.

Bush is wrong, McCain is wrong, the Republicans are wrong — we need a national approach to health care. It’s the fiscally conservative thing to do.

1: NSMutableArray *particles = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
2: [particles addObject:newParticle];
3: ...
4: Particle *p;
5: for(n=0;n<[particles count]; ++n ) {
6: p = [particles objectAtIndex:n];
7: [p setName:[self ownerName]];

In line 1 we see the Obj-C way of initializing an object. First we send an alloc message to the NSMutableArray class and then send an init message to the object returned by it. We then assign it to a pointer variable of the appropriate type. In line 2 we add a new object newParticle to the particles array. Later, at line 4 we create a C-style pointer to a Particle object and in line 5 we find out the number of objects in the array particles by sending it a count message. In line 6 we pull out a specific object from the array and in line 7 we send the setName message to our Particle object (the normal "setter" for the instance variable name) and send as a parameter the value from the "getter" of the class we are in (self) for the instance variable ownerName.

You can see there is an odd mix of traditional C and object stuff.

It's also quite flexible. For example, if you have an instance variable named isEnabled you can refer to that variable in 3 different ways:

isEnabled = NO;
self.isEnabled = NO;
[self setIsEnabled:NO];

In the first two we access the variable directly and in the third we call the setter method. As we saw in lines 1 and 7 above, you can nest these as much as you like.

self.currentParticle.size = 10;
[[self currentParticle] setSize:10];

But at any time you can whack in some normal ol' C:

size = (sizeFactor *2.0*arc4random() / (float)UINT_MAX)+sizeFactor;

Pretty cool.

“You can put lipstick on a pig,” Obama said. “It’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still going to stink after eight years.”

For the McCain campaign, the comments were a not-so-subtle reference to Palin’s comments at the GOP convention. She asked delegates if they knew the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom. “Lipstick,” she said.

The McCain camp called Obama’s comments “offensive and disgraceful” and said Obama owed Palin an apology. In its latest advertisement, the McCain campaign today called Obama’s comments sexist and used the punch line: “Ready to lead? No. Ready to smear? Yes.”

But Obama said the ad was a tactic to avoid serious debate.

“They’d much rather have the story — this is the McCain campaign — about phony and foolish diversions than about the future. This happens every election cycle. Every four years this is what we do. We have an energy crisis. We have an education system that is not working for too many of our children and is making us less competitive. We have an economy that is creating hardship for families all across America. We’ve got two wars going on, veterans coming home not being cared for, and this is what they want to talk about.

If you think Obama was making a sexist remark towards Palin you are a brain-washed idiot.

Even Huckabee saw though this stupid McCain tactic:

HUCKABEE: It’s an old expression, and I’m going to have to cut Obama some slack on that one. I do not think he was referring to Sarah Palin. He didn’t reference her — if you take the two sound bites together, it may sound like it, but I’ve been a guy at the podium many times, and you say something that’s maybe a part of an old joke and then somebody ties it in. So, I’m going to have to cut him slack.

1. 9/11
2. Katrina
3. The credit crisis
4. The closely related housing crisis
5. Iraq
6 Afghanistan
7. $4 gas

Now the government just nationalized Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac — another example of deregulation at work.

While the Democrats are deeply flawed in many ways, the Republicans are just completely incompetent. They are unfit to lead this country. They want their cake and eat it too and the math does not work out.

Recall the Republicans held the Congress for 6 of the last 8 years and the Presidency for 20 of the last 28 years.

This has been 8 years of a financially irresponsible administration, a foreign policy based on expensive national building, an economic policy of caving to the rich and sticking it to the middle class and a deregulation policy that has led to Yet Another Expensive Government Bailout.

It makes no sense whatsoever to believe that the Republicans are the answer to the problems that the Republicans created.

We need a president like Clinton again — a really smart moderate with liberal tendencies. We don’t need another President like Bush.

Obama could be a very Clinton-like President. McCain would be another Bush-like President.

At the biggest moment of his political career, he delivered a flat, stupefyingly boring address that drained away all the excitement generated by Sarah Palin’s pit-bull-with-lipstick performance the night before. His central message – that it’s time to clean up Washington – was incoherent. Yes, McCain has some legitimate reformist credentials. But he’s also a 25-year Washington insider who marches in lockstep with George Bush on such issues as the war in Iraq and tax cuts for the wealthy.

“It really is an audacious ploy, to tell people that the country’s got to correct the mistakes made by a political party when that’s the very party you represent,” writes Tom Shales in today’s Washington Post. “It’s like staging a revolution against yourself – saying that the Republicans have got to go so the Republicans can move in and clean up the mess.”

The facts are in: McCain supports 90% of the Bush agenda. You call that change? Palin is worse than McCain, favoring teaching creationism in school, being irrationally anti-choice and begging oil companies to come in and defile the last great wilderness in America.

Obama/Biden is the ticket that represents real change. The Republicans have been in power for 20 of the last 28 years. They had their chance.

Here one such community organizer responds.

Look — I think the experience argument is perfectly legitimate for everyone on the Presidential tickets. McCain spent the last 26 years not being a chief executive. Same with Biden. That doesn’t disqualify them in the slightest. Obama has a great resume. Sarah Palin has an impressive resume. Let’s grill them on their record and how it supports their ambitions.

As a side note, the bulk of Palin’s “executive experience” was managing a city with an annual budget around $10 million. To an order of magnitude I manage a budget that big at the company I own. Obama is managing a budget now, for his campaign, that spends more than that in a month. I think being a mayor is good experience and it looks just fine on her resume. But it’s not some trump card.

2. Foreign policy experience is required to be President!
Obama doesn’t have any!
Neither does Palin!
Both McCain and Biden do!

3. Washington insiders are bad.
McCain is a Washington insider!
So is Biden!
But Palin isn’t!
Neither is Obama!
But see #2! The only way to get foreign policy experience is to be a Washington insider!

4. The liberals are being mean to Palin!
CNN is being mean to Palin!
Palin is being mean to Obama!
Giuliani is being mean to Obama!

5. Obama is an elitist!
An Ivy League education is bad!
Community organizers are lame!
McCain is so rich he doesn’t know how many houses he has!

Let the hypocrisy reign!