I just looked up all bleary-eyed from staring at papers all day to notice that we suddenly have an inch or so of snow piled up on the ground. I was wondering why my wife was so late getting home from work — she’s probably creeping along on slushy roads trying to make it home safely.
And—oh, no—I have to drive to Minneapolis tomorrow!
One of my students picked up this flyer in Minneapolis this weekend. It looks like the creationists are visiting the University of Minnesota this Wednesday and Friday!
They do love to book that auditorium in the Physics building — don’t be fooled, though. None of the science departments on campus endorse this nonsense, and I know from talking to some of them that the faculty cringe at this use of their facilities…and you know the creationists do this for the faux-sciencey illusion that they’re actually presenting their work in the heart of academia.
This talk is being presented by Dave Nutting of the Alpha Omega Institute, which, despite the grandiose name, is two wackaloons operating out of a small rental office next to a storage unit and behind the pet clinic in a Grand Junction, Colorado. They’re doing a tour through central Minnesota, and are being promoted by our local collection of kooks, the Twin Cities Creation Science Association. I have no idea why it says Coca Cola at the bottom of the flyer; I hope they aren’t sponsoring this silliness.
Unfortunately, I’m going to be in Washington D.C. this weekend, so I have to miss the circus. If you are in the neighborhood, please do show up, laugh, and report back.
Really low. Here’s an anti-Al Franken brochure that’s being mailed around here in Minnesota—that’s aimed at kids, with childish illustrations, while accusing Franken of some contemptible acts.
“Come on in, kids… Senator Franken’s going to tell a few jokes!”
“We shouldn’t have to be ashamed of Minnesota’s senator!”
Al Franked tackled a protestor at a political rally- and bragged about it
“We shouldn’t have to wonder what he will say…”
Al Franken wrote a pornographic column in Playboy- and thought it was funny.
“We shouldn’t have to apologize for his actions…”
Al Franken has written so-called comedy routines about raping women.
Al Franken: A bad example for our kids; completely unfit for public office
Charming. Man, but I hope Coleman sinks into the sewage permanently next week — but apparently this is still a very close race.
We’re having our very first snowfall of the new winter. It’s kind of comforting to see, but a) my wife has an hour long commute each weekday, and b) this usually marks the descent of the region into the deep freeze for the next 4-6 months.
We were just talking about Al, and now I learn that he’ll be making a campaign stop on my campus on Monday, 27 October, at 10:30am in Oyate Hall in the student center. I don’t even have classes at that time, so I’ll be able to stop by and join the cheering crowds — if you’re somewhere nearby, come on around.
An artist, William Hessian, has hidden 35 miniature artworks portraying the octopus in public parks around Minneapolis. Your job: find them! It’s getting cold, too, so you might want to do it before the first snowfall.
They just don’t work. Maybe you’ve heard of “Minnesota nice”, this strange passive-aggressive attitude around here that compels everyone to compete at being the most polite and deferential…and it completely defeats the function of the 4-way stop at an intersection. The rule is simple—whoever first comes to a complete stop gets to be the first to proceed through the intersection—but real Minnesotans can’t grasp it. It’s nice to let someone go through first, so you’ll sometimes run into these situations where two cars are parked at the crossroads, with each driver waving for the other to go ahead, and they just sit there. Then they’ll both edge forward, stop abruptly as they notice the other fellow trying to advance, and the gesticulating commences again.
I just made a trip to the grocery store when I came upon two cars stopped, one to the left and the other to the right, their drivers flapping their arms madly and not going anywhere. My arrival seems to have made the situation worse, because they added me to their pattern of waving. Come on, I’m last at the intersection, I’m supposed to be last to proceed! It’s easy!
Anyway, I’m from Washington. I gave them 15 or 20 seconds, then said screw it, and went ahead.
I’m so used to seeing nothing but bad news, it’s surprising to see a community actually making a substantial investment in its educational infrastructure. We’re adding a $40+ million planetarium to the downtown library. That’s terrific!
It also adds a useful perspective. Remember how appalled we all were (and are) that Answers in Genesis could raise $27 million for a creationist museum? Well, that is a lot of money, and it’s depressing that slack-jawed yokels would sink that much cash into an edifice to ignorance, but on the grand scale of what real educational institutions have to spend to build and maintain genuine museums and planetariums and similar facilities for public edification, it’s a cheap outfit.
Cosmic Variance brings up John McCain’s opinion of planetariums. He’s ag’in ’em. Of course, with McCain and Palin, one has to wonder if they even know what they are.
Let’s see…it must have a lot of accordions in it, or cowboys singing drunken love songs to their trucks, right? Just to blow your minds, my colleague with esoteric musical taste, Nic McPhee, is getting interviewed tonight, and he’ll be playing some of his favorite songs on the radio. This is our local university radio station, which has a limited license and can’t play anything that has cracked the top 40 in the last 10 or 20 years, but I don’t think Nic’s taste will conflict at all with the station rules.
So tune in to KUMM, 89.7FM, at 6:00pm Central and have those rural Minnesotan stereotypes broken. If you live farther away than Starbuck, Minnesota, you can also listen to the internet stream.
One of the quirks of this small town is the music I sometimes hear in the local grocery store. We don’t get the usual boring muzak that was screened by some beancounter to maximize inoffensiveness — I was quite charmed the first time I went shopping there, and instead of boring old 1001 Strings soft-soaping pop, I actually heard them playing Patti Smith belting out “Gloria”. Now it usually isn’t so transcendently magnificent — in fact, it’s still usually the kind of thing you might hear on a soft-rock or easy-listening or country station — but at least now and then you get to hear something with character.
Which isn’t always good.
So this afternoon I zipped over to pick up some fresh tomatoes and provolone for dinner, step in the door, and hear this horrible adenoidal voice with a Minnesota accent singing this:
Beating on the cheeseHEADS!
Beating on the cheeseHEADS!
We are all rejoicing
Beating on the cheeseHEADS!
Not just once, not twice, but over and over again, for the entire duration of my visit (which was short: there may be something to this idea that background music can influence market behavior.) It was incredibly annoying, but everyone else in the store was going about their business in a perfectly normal fashion. Weird.
I guess there is some football game tonight that has the region riled up. There’s nothing quite like bizarre, understated Minnesota patriotism to highlight some of the strangeness of local culture.
