more family photos

more photos from the Minnesota gophers:

A bit more recent - since the big blizzard in January through a couple weeks ago. Misplaced the camera for a while. I'm not sure, but I might bring it to the Tae Kwon Do next weekend for JrGopher#1's yellow belt test.

Minnehaha

















The hike en route to the falls:











Further on the hike - please note the fact that Jr.Gopher#2 could just sit on the snow without sitting down.













Playing ice hockey over @ the But-Palskis













Yes, we will show this to Jr.Gopher#2's girlfriends. He said he wanted to be a princess, and the neighbor girl assuredly had the accessories to do this. (Lord, don't get me going on the revolting Disney Princess obsession.)















MPR's modern station, 89.3, had their annual Rock the Cradle a couple weekends ago. It's a music splendor at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. All focused for children, I would assume about 10 and under. A kiddie disco, where the DJs were the radio station's DJs. One program was an Instrument Petting Zoo, where the kids could pick up and actually play different instruments. Violins, cellos, an electric piano, a drum set, a couple hand drums, electric guitar, and lots of different little percussion item. The boys both found the string instruments interesting and fun.

holy cow ...

Tone of awe: oh, my god.


Parking lot of Cub Foods @ 60th & Nicollet.
Someone just told me there used to be a gas station there before the grocery.

[review] Careless in Red

Wow - I just realized I've never written a review for an Elizabeth George book. I own almost all of them and am eagerly awaiting the latest being available at the Mpls Library.

Which is which?

updated photo selection: okay if you are the one person who actually look at this often (Hi, mom), you'll be able to tell, since only one changed - I got a much better photo from Japan (thank you, Der Spiegel).


Tell me which one is Fukushima (Tokyo) and which is Chernobyl (Prypyat)?

Photograph #1


















Photograph #2
















A Ukrainian Liquidator, one of the first on site at Chrnobyl & surprisingly still alive, compliments the Japanese. "We wore normal clothes and a face respirator. As we went in to the reactor we were given an iodine preparation which was normally the first emergency aid..."

Today, 50 are remaining to control 3 reactors, hoping to keep them cooled. Or more, depending on which source. The Ministry of Health increased the acceptable exposure limit to "to 250 millisieverts from 100 millisieverts, five times the maximum exposure permitted for American nuclear plant workers."

Despite the demands of occupational safety experts here to protect workers, I can't imagine the Dept. of Labor (i.e., OSHA) actually being capable of moving overnight to change an exposure limit. The cynic in me thinks this is, in part, because after-the-fact the safety professions would turn around and demand to have all of the other 30-year old limits changed, too.

I'm surprised the Green Party in the US isn't going more ballistic, given its absolutist platform on nuclear power. The party chair for Die Grüne [the German Green Party] was making this point in a rather restrained manner Sunday, anticipating the impending state elections in Baden-Württemburg. Given the party's platform on feminism, I suppose referring to her as the chairman would be gauche.

Interestingly in the German news, the Greens are confronted with 'warming their hearts' [ihre Seele wärmen] over the opportunity to renew one of their core beliefs coming to conflict with their desire to create a Black-Green coalition government, i.e. CDU/Green, which to the American bipolar condition sounds strange with the conservatives & tree-huggers. Admittedly, the German Conservatives are still in touch with reality, unlike ours.


#1 = Chernobyl
#2 = Fukushima

Financial whining

I'm so sick of listening to complaining about cutting government spending. Let's back up and look at it again, folks. How to fix the country's budget/spending problem:

1. Figure out how much money is actually coming in
2. Make a list of everything that you want the government to pay for.
3. Make a list - it'll be reeeaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllly long - of every last damn dime spent by Uncle Sam. Do NOT make this list first. Ignore, completely and totally ignore what we're spending today when you make the list of what you actually want to pay for.
4. Start spending and stop when your balance sheet hits $0.

The financial wizard/con-men are trying to screw you by including point #3 above. This is completely irrelevant to the solution. Ignore today's reality when trying to create tomorrow's. Really. Seriously.

"Cutting Spending" is the modern mantra. It's bullshit. You don't want to pay for the state's maternal and child welfare (a.k.a. WIC) ... just don't put it on the We Want To Pay For It list. Cut everything!
Start from Zero. Not from the current budget.
What do you want? Can you pay for it? Figure out what you can afford. Everything else will be eliminated anyway, so stop arguing about whether or not to cut it.

Back up.

1. Decide whether or not you want to live with Capitalism. If you don't, please go away. If you do, please wake up and smell the coffee. You don't live in a capitalistic economy, if you live in the USA. I hate to break it to you, but all of you already live in a socialist state which has NOTHING to do with whether GW or Obama is in office.

2. Eliminate every last goddamned penny of federal subsidies. Take the resultant $1.6 Trillion* and cut the federal deficit by half.

Subsidies are economic engineering. A True and Pure Capitalist would refuse to take them. A real capitalist would ... well, actually she would take them. And any other damn thing the federal government threw her way.
Then she would start to rely on them.
Then she would demand them as her due.
Then she would claim they were her right as a business owner.
Then ... one day she might look in the mirror and realize that she's been sucking off the teat of the American Taxpayer and has committed Capitalistic Heresy and Apostasy.

If you want subsidies, that's fine. Just don't ask for them and then delude yourself into thinking you're a Capitalist.


As I listen in painful agony every weekday morning to 91.1 FM, I hear people of all parties saying they want to cut spending. And I never ever ever ever hear them say exactly what they want to cut.

The following need to be removed from any conservative (that is, the American ones) whining about social problems. None of this would be a problem if you just sucked it up and did what you're supposed to be doing according to the Word of God and Conservative Society:

1. birth control: if you ain't married, you don't need it because you aren't having sex
   
2. abortion: since the only way you'd get pregnant is if you're married, you can't need an abortion
   
3. financial aid: if you can't afford to pay tuition, you need to get off your ass, get a job, and save up your money. You cannot sit back and expect me to pay for you to go to college.
4. unemployment benefits: you'd have a job, if you just got off your ass and made a real effort
5. unemployment benefits: if you'd saved your money like a responsible person, you wouldn't need to worry about a year of being without a job because your neighbors and fellow parishoners will be helping you like Good Folk Should
   
6. job safety: if you just do your job properly, there wouldn't be any accidents.
7. drug safety: if we just let Pharma alone, they'll be more than happy enough to let us know if there's a problem with their products
   
8. food safety: if it isn't safe, don't buy it and the market will realign itself to reflect the customer demand.

Holy cow - think of how much money we could save by eliminating all of the government agencies or laws which regulate the above items?
OSHA
MSHA
USDA/APHIS/PHS
EPA
CSB
FDA

This, plus cutting all subsidies should fix the Whole Financial Crisis and we could get back on with our lives.

Nigeria v. France

So, unless I'm becoming even more chronologically illiterate ... the opening game of the 2011 Women's World Cup in Germany, hosted by the current World Cup holders, Germany, is between ... drum roll, please ... Nigeria and France in some city somewhere named Sinsheim.

???

oh, yeah ... later on that day, Germany will be playing Canada in Olympic Stadium in Berlin.


Sinsheim, fyi, according to FIFA "lies at the heart of the Kraichgau region".

... uhhh...

I probably know more German geography than the Average American -- terrifying, considering how limited my knowledge actually is -- and I have not only no idea where Kraichgau is, I've never even heard of it, either.

To put this statement in perspective, I can't actually tell you exactly where Mecklenberg-Vorpommern is ... but I do know it's a state, I can spell it, and I'm pretty sure it's in the former DDR somewhere in the vague vicinity of Berlin. Okay, so just about all of East Germany was in the vague vicinity of Berlin, so sue me. And, yes, I picked that state at random after thinking "hmm, which state sounds the coolest & do I know where it is?" I didn't look at a list of states, I already knew it was one. Really. Being inveterately curious, I of course had to go look. It's in the north-west corner of modern Germany, north of Brandenburg, which is the state surrounding but not including Berlin.

Further on, from FIFA, I read that it's in Baden-Württemberg and is 22 km. SE of Heidelberg.

At least, unlike most Americans, I know what a kilometer is.

Cancer sucks

We got totally shitty news Saturday. The 6-year old son of some friends at church, whom we haven't unfortunately seen in a while, discovered he has cancer. Not some pansy-ass whimpy thing like leukemia. The name is 2" long and ends with -carcinoma. It's highly aggressive & highly malignant.

Something so rare in kids that the docs at the Mayo Clinic [just down the road from here] initially said, "that can't be right", go get another opinion. 4 opinions later ...

There's only 2 cases reported in the literature about kids. Which translates to "we're sort of clueless about what to do".

He started chemo over the weekend. A whirlwind saga of options on chemo, surgery, and lots of medical terminology.

They aren't telling him the extent of the extremely poor prognosis. It hadn't occurred to me that there would be a psych specialist for the parents. Managing the information flow to their child, to help him stay informed enough about what's being done to him without nuking his still-positive outlook.

I'm not sure if Jr.Gopher#1 remembers the boy - right after we started going to St. Albert's, there were four boys all the same age who really enjoyed playing together.

A friend of the family is in the home stretch dealing with pancreatic cancer. Did I mention cancer sucks? He's 78. As unhappy as I will be, and likely contemplating the age of my parents, it will not be a life cut tragically short. 6 years, though ...?

Explaining to Jr.#1 that Don is sick and probably won't live much longer seemed a beneficial situation. After all, he intellectually knows that old people die. I am assuming [?] that Don's death won't be emotionally traumatic. Raven the Cat dying will probably be more emotional.

We told the boys that Mr.Gopher's uncle died - but this was 2 years ago. We could have said any other stranger died, for all it mattered to them. They had never even heard of this man.

So, thankfully at least, their first exposure to Death will be the death of someone they actually know, and it won't be their grandparents. But this boy? Even if Michael doesn't remember him all that well, trying to explain that a 6-year old boy probably won't live through the Summer...? God. No wonder people want to be atheists.

I was the Lector yesterday at Mass, and read the Prayers of Intercession.

These are the prayers that include:
lector: "For the healing of the sick, we pray."
Response: "Lord hear our prayer"

I was sooooo close to simply adding the boy's name to the list of the sick and realized I didn't know if the parent would want me to ... it made me feel so sad to refrain from asking people to pray for him.

So,
For the healing of Will Newll and the courage of his parent, we pray.
Lord, hear our prayers.

If anyone can, please say a prayer - or whatever intervention method you want - for Will Newell.

I'm usually one who cries at the drop of a hat. This ...? Mr.Gopher told me on Saturday night. It was this afternoon before it hit me. I'm sitting in the StPl library, trying to finish my thesis, and I can't stop crying and don't have any kleenex.

photos - past 6 mo. or so

Good Afternoon, everyone!

So I've been slow on the uptake. Or at least up load. Photos from the past 6 months or so. From last Summer's vacation to Michigan to late autumn. I'll try to get the Christmas/New Years/Birthday photos. When the German School posts the pictures from last Friday's school performances, I'll post a link there, as well. Of course, if they have a video of the 1st Grade singing a ditty about boogers [ein Popel ein Popel ...] I'll link to that, too. I could tell which parents in the audience spoke German based upon where the laughter was.

Michigan:
























We got some up-close and personal exposure to the birds at Potter Park Zoo in Lansing


















One of Jr.Gopher#2 favorite stuffed animals is a llama; he finally got to see a real one in person.


















Beale Gardens at Michigan State University


















The hat was to hide my horrible self-inflicted hair-do. The ferret was just to make the boys laugh.


















Here in Mpls, Fall 2010

Not 100% discernible, but the silver thing behind his head is a duct-taped mummified water fountain.


















No, you really don't want to be giving him a license yet.


















Near where the Minnehaha Falls flow into the Mississippi River


















The Minnesota River flooded this year, a bit higher than usual. The submerged trail here is normally a mile from the river bank. To imagine the amount of water involved, consider that it is pretty flat out here. Someone mentioned the excess water flow in the millions of gallons. Too bad BP didn't schedule the gulf oil spill a bit earlier - this could have flushed it all away from the shore.





















Halloween 2010

Lufthansa Flight 596 en route to Dusseldorf departing from Minneapolis-St.Paul International Airport, we'll be flying with the plane named after Gladbeck. Yes there is one, and we've flown on it.























Jr.Gopher#2's rocket ship required registry with some nation. But he refused to put BRD or USA on it. I am glad, however, to have avoided hand cramps since he didn't want "Deutschland", either: the other side of the costume reads "Germany" with its flag.

























Near Mississippi River, Autumn 2010

Playground























The Minnehaha Falls are somehow more impressive when they're frozen. I should find a Summer vs. Winter photo pair.

















Walking w/ Papa

















earlier section of trail


















Computer Engineering & Game Design 101
Jr.Gopher#1 decided to build his own laptop, since I wouldn't let him play games on mine. This also required, of course, designing his own games to go with them. He insisted on the keyboard layout, since - as he informed me - he was perfectly well aware of the fact that B, and not S, comes after A.



















Jr.Gopher#1 and I took in an ice hockey game: U of M vs. U of M. [The photo is Goldy the Gopher on the ice.] After the debacle of his emotional melt-down at the state soccer championship game, when we randomly picked the team geographically closest to S. Mpls to cheer for, "our team" lost 0-3, I convinced him we could cheer for both teams, since he was born in Michigan, and I am going to school a Minnesota. Luckily, U Minn beat U Mich 5-3. It was the first time I've seen someone get a 10 min. penalty, too. Double luckily, it didn't occur to him to ask why grown-ups who break into fist fights and hit each other with sticks only get a 2 min. time out, whereas he gets 6 min.

Rammstein & Sesame St.

Krümmel Monster mit Ich Esse den Keks a la Rammstein
Cookie Monster with "I Eat the Cookies"

Winnie the Pooh - again, in German - Ich Will
was removed by youtube
I guess Disney didn't like being coopted by Rammstein. sigh ... it was really good.

oh, them!

Jr.Gopher#1 was speaking with his phys. ed. teacher last Friday. I caught part of the conversation:

PE teacher: ... you like Gopher Sports and ice hockey.

PE teacher: Who do you think is going to win the game this weekend?

Jr.G #1: huh?

PE teacher: The big game this weekend - who are you cheering for?

Jr.G #1: huh?

Me to teacher: No one in our family follows American football.

Jr.G #1: oh! football!

PE teacher holds out her hand with her nails painted green & yellow.

PE teacher: Whose colors are these?

Jr.G #1: Brazil

racism?

After hearing the news on MPR this a.m. about Rep. Giffords, my first thought was "god, I hope he wasn't Mexican".
How sad.

What's Your Rank?

What's your job score?

Ms. Healthy Gopher:
Occupational Safety: 89

STFU&GBTW:
Motion Picture Editor 19
Computer Programmer 18
not sure which would apply - maybe you count as 18.5

Mr. HT
Computer Programmer 18

Mr. Gopher
Electrical Engineer: 62

Dr.Nuke: Physicist 12
Heather: Attorney: 82
The Author: Author: 93

Of course, there's always top and bottom rank:
Mathematician: 1
Lumberjack: 200

2011

Where did 2010 go?

Am I actually going to finish my taxes before April?

Am I actually going to finish the Christmas/New Year cards tonight & post them tomorrow a.m.?

Holy shit ... am I really going to be 45 in 4 days?

is Jr.Gopher#2 actually going to be 4?

Is the Lansing City Assessor's Office going to spontaneously implode due to the amount of financial b.s. exceeding critical density?

sigh...

Bumper Sticker of the Month

Don't bitch about it
Start a Revolution

reading review style

I found an interesting series of novels - sort of a noir-wizard-Sam-Spade. On the Brain Candy level. This certainly isn't Raymond Chandler. Pleasant distraction and quick read. Review likely to be coming after finishing my thesis. Uhh ... thesis ... that reminds me of something ... something ... OH! that thing on my desk.

The author has written 13(?12) books in the series about the same character. Do I want to actually read the reviews of any beyond the next one? I really don't want to know that John and Mary wind up romantically involved. Really blew some of the romantic/sexual tension in the book I'm reading right now. Of course, that information was in a review of it. So, when you're writing reviews for Amazon (or whatever) - please don't add in tangential information about the further plot/character development.

I guess I'm over-organized on something. I only read books in the order they're written (chronologically for the story line, not publication date). I read all of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin opus. Once I decided to read all 20 of them ... well, I didn't want to find out what happened in the next one. I already completely enjoyed them, so I never bothered to read the reviews. Admittedly, the existence of other volumes does allow one to draw the conclusion that Our Heroes survive. The trick for a truly good author is to make you forget this when keeping you on the edge of your seat for the book in your hands.

Hennepin County Library - please remind those two people that I'm waiting for #4.
.

History, revisited

Kingdom of Heaven was a visually . beautiful movie. Now that Orlando Bloom is no longer riding the LotR / PotC wave, I suppose it might be easier to watch it without seeing Legolas in the Holy Lands. The biggest visual draw-back of the whole movie is Eva Green. Jeeze... can't she ditch the over-done icky eye makeup that's in all her work?

This is the Crusades done to Eyes Without a Face, Billy Idol.
At least the focus on this isn't so bad, as long as you don't make it full-screen.

Yes, this is a simplistic summary of the Crusades. It is also much, much better than the 6th Grade history textbook I looked at a few years ago. At least it mentions
a) that there were more reasons than "for the glory of god"
b) the Children's crusade
c) other consequences of the wars beyond "Europeans got their ass kicked by the Muslims"





and, if you want Kingdom of Heaven on screen - watch in on a big-screen if possible. The big battle scenes and the long shots of Jerusalem/surrounding lands are better big. The costuming and visuals are really impressive. It's Ridley Scott, a.k.a., Gladiator, in his historian (and unfortunately not Alien) mode. Balian's "rise a knight" speech is Hollywood-esque overdone "ain't the little peasant peon really the center of all that is Right and Good, who are the True Good Guys". It's one of those "sort-of-based upon a story we think the scriptwriter once read", but at least they didn't hire a WASP to play Saladin.

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1418789145/
sorry, can't figure out how to imbed it from IMdB.

How often did I tell students ...

Well, at least Mr.Gopher married a woman who labels her axes.



and right now, every single one of them is:

y-axis: critical fraction (by-pass/through)
x-axis: charge burden (n)

let's see if this choice makes it past my adviser

statistics - bizarre indeed

Blogspot has a new tab/function on my page (well, I assume everyone else's too): Stats. I don't know if you can see it, or if it's only available to me. Being inveterately curious, I - of course - looked. It has a graph of page views vs. time. I can't tell if that includes me or not. (update:yes, it does) One tab in Stats provides a list of post titles and number of views for that particular page. The maximum by a looooong way was Scary Hairdos in the Reichstag on Election Day.

It also has a "traffic source", which makes no sense to me. It also leaves me wondering which country/corporation uses .tr This tab lists "Referring URL" and "Referring Sites". Neither one makes sense to me. Given this ... what's the point? I've been interested recently in how statistics is used to further misguide the ignorant/uneducated (which ever you think is less offensive a term, though I really do mean both). If so, these statistics are simply incomprehensible and therefore harmless. I think.

That said, the other function, Audience, is actually interesting, since it's graphic: a world map with countries (and US states) in different colors based upon viewing traffic, a text list of those countries, and pie charts indicating which browser program is used for looking at the page. I realize a large number of the US views might be myself, if the system doesn't consider whether or not I'm the viewer. But the rest of the world? Germany: a couple of friends & in-laws there. France: one in-law there. UK - French resident moved there. But ... Canada, Russia, Netherlands, India, Luxembourg, and Malaysia??

Inveterate curiosity sated: Went to list of how many views per post from today. My viewing is included in the numbers. Therefore the number of views from the US is not really *that* impressive, since a significant - if small - % is mine. I'm not in Turkey or Malaysia, though...

what took you so long?

Overheard comment from woman probably 25-30 yr. old: "I'm going to get a passport..."

You don't have one?

How else are you going to convince the FEMA internment death camps that you're actually a US Citizen?

How else are you going to escape from the Idiots running the country & seek asylum somewhere else, if you can't get across the boarder?

Bumper Sticker of the Month (sort of)

so this is a while afterwards, but still funny:

Signs @ Rally for Sanity:

Sure there are more, but I don't want to go back through all of the ones I read, so here's a limited selection:

I came here Illegally. I went 5 mph over the limit on I-95

If you don't want the 1st Amendment, you can't have the 2nd.

I screwed you all, but thanks for blaming the black guy. w/Bush photo.

Really must see the photo.

I can't put the math symbols here, so just click here.

I have no problem paying taxes because I'm an adult and that's part of the deal
I'm ok with the mosque - but WalMart really scares me

If screaming makes you right ... the 3-year old won the street is a friggin' genius

I wouldn't presume to tell God who He hates.

Another sign you just have to see, but probably can't read the fine print.

God hates flags.





The following are still funny, but you probably don't want to read all of this, so the top ones are my favorites.

Taxes aren't why your life sucks.

Critical Thinking: The Other National Deficit
I'm a Marxist. w/Groucho photo

I scare Juan Williams at airports. sign held by female, brown-skinned woman wearing hijab

Facts have a well-known Liberal bias.

Glenn Beck brainwashed my grandparents. I want them back!

Vote Cthulhu. Why pick a lesser evil?

Pssst...if you see my mom in the audience, tell her I'm working on my dissertation

Pi is all the irrationality I need

Empowering the Powerful - RepubliCorp

Thanks Honey 4 staying home w/ the kids

I've only got hair under my scarf. wearing hijab

I want to see Sarah Palin's birth certificate

Repeal Civil Rights -- I was happy at the back of the bus. held by black man

No more unqualified candidates: show me your grades in
US Gov't
Environmental Sci
Stats & Econ
or STFU

Give Us Back the Colonies & we'll give you health care. under UK flag











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