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First of May
Well, it’s the first of May already. It’s the day when I listen to one of my favorite Jonathan Coulton songs.
It’s also No Pants Day. So if you’re wearing pants take them off.
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Numbers are Hard
Currently everybody is going crazy about the Swine Flu. Sure it’s scary because it’s new and we don’t know much about it, and it seems to be spreading, but really, it’s not much of a threat yet. Right now I think it’s mostly hype. News now days all seems to be about hype. It’s more about getting good ratings rather than getting the facts out there.
Less than 200 people worldwide have died from Swine Flu. Sure, death is never good, but that number is miniscule, 35,000 people die every year just in the US from the ordinary flu. Obviously the world wide numbers are even much greater.
It’s just like the terrorist scares. How much money has been spent to make us “supposedly” safer? Your own appendix, your car, and yes, the common flu are all much more likely to kill you than a terrorist.
People are just bad at understanding statistics. All the casinos, and people that play the lottery proves that. My Mom can go to Aruba on her timeshare, but she said she would never go there because they kidnap people down there. What? Sure there was a sad story of a kidnapping down there that was plastered all over the news for ratings, but I am willing to bet there are more kidnappings and even higher crime rates here in the US.
I am not a huge fan of flying, but I am not scared for my life. I realize I am much more likely to get killed on the drive to the airport, than I am in a plane crash. Flying is the quickest and safest way to travel. It also makes great ratings on the rare occasion that a plane goes down. It’s stupid to live your life in fear of things you can’t control.
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Bad News
The roads are still flooded by my Wife’s Aunts house. It sounds like she is going to be living with us a few more weeks until the water goes down. This weekend we learned some bad news that is going to bring even more house guests for who knows how long.
My Wife’s, Grandpa’s Wife has esophageal cancer. It’s going to be pretty tough on my Wife’s Grandpa. His previous Wife died of cancer 20 years ago, and now he has to go through it all again. She probably isn’t going to last long though. It’s in her esophagus and as spread to her lymph nodes, lungs, and possible her liver. That would be tough for a young person to fight off, let alone an 80 year old.
They are from a small town in northern Minnesota, so they will be staying with us for a while as she is going to have treatment done at the Roger Maris Cancer Center here in Fargo. It will inconvenience us a bit, but it’s the least we could do to help the family out.
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Sister-in-law Annoyances
My Sister-in-law drives me nuts. In a month the Wife and I and my Brother and his Wife are heading out to Denver. Our Half-Sister is graduating college, so we thought we would head out there and make a long weekend vacation out of it. Last time we were in Denver nine years ago we took a day and went down to Colorado Springs to see Pikes Peak. We took the Cog Railroad up it the top. It was am amazing view from the top, and a nice relaxing train ride up to the top.
We thought it would be cool to do it again, plus my Brother wants to go too.
Well, his wife is pregnant and is all worried that the higher elevation is going to be bad for the kid. WTF? I understand being careful, and not wanting to do anything that will harm the kid, but I really doubt spending two hours in a higher elevation than you are use to is going to do anything. It’s not like she is ready to pop either. I think she will be three months along when we are in Denver.
But whatever.
She is also super religious, doesn’t trust doctors, refuses to take any kind of medications, but takes tons of “natural” herbal supplement crap. I wouldn’t be surprised is she is one of those nut-jobs that doesn’t believe in vaccinations.
She is a nice person, don’t get me wrong, I get along with her just fine. She just has total opposite believes than I do. It’s a little annoying spending time with her. She has some quirks that I am not use to. She wont ride in elevators, has to sit in the front seat of cars, and always has to sit on the end if in a row of seats.
But whatever.
It should still be a fun vacation in a month.
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First
This is the best video that I have seen in a long time.
Watch We Didnt Start the Flame War on CollegeHumor -
Science is Great
I have always been a Skeptic. Long before I ever even heard the term Skeptic, I was one. I don’t remember a time when I believed in Santa Claus. I faked my belief to receive more presents. Even as a young kid I understood the logistics in visiting every house in the world in one night, even with so called “Magic Flying Reindeer”. I was the kid that went swimming right after I ate just to see if you really could get cramps, and you know what, I never did.
I have always been a critical thinker. I wish they taught critical thinking is school. People believe so many things that they shouldn’t. Just because you hear something doesn’t make it true. Everybody needs to stop and just think if things make sense. It drives me crazy when someone says they caught a could because they went outside without a hat on. Everyone knows colds are caused by bacteria or viruses. They have nothing to do with being cold. You are not going to get sick for not wearing a hat when it’s cold out. You might feel uncomfortable, maybe get frostbite, or hyperthermia; but never a cold.
The first time that I ever heard about the Skeptical Community was back in 2004 when I started listening to podcasts. There are many skeptic podcasts that get your brain thinking critically. My favorites are Skepticality, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, Skeptoid, and QuakCast. I am obsessed with learning from people that are much smarter than me. My spare time is filled with listening and reading about science and skeptical topics. I have a hard time watching TV now. I just can’t find enough smart shows on TV. Watching TV makes me feel like I am getting Dumb.
People sometimes think skeptics are close minded because of the many things that don’t believe in. Real skeptics are ready to change their mind as soon as there is scientific proof. We don’t believe things “just because”. We need scientific evidence. Science is great. The way the scientific method works is amazing. Scientists are constantly learning and science evolves as they learn. Scientists aren’t good marketers though. That is why all the pseudo-science, and alternative medicine crap exists. The people pushing the crap are good marketers and have money to make. People tend to want to believe in “magic” solution to things instead of the boring truth.
When I have nothing else to blog about, I might start blogging about some of the skeptical topics that I am passionate about. I might not have many readers, but getting the truth out to people one person at a time can’t be bad. In the meantime, Rebecca Watson recently blogged about a bunch of skeptics that are on Twitter. It is a great list of smart people to follow. I follow most of them. These are my “celebrities” on Twitter. Much better than Britney Spears.
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Origin of the Easter Bunny
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Back to Normal
Life is getting back to normal here in Fargo. The river has been dropping a foot a day now and is no threat. It is expected to rise a bit next week when it warms up and the snow starts to melt, but still should be no problem.
I got so use to watching the river levels and listening to all the press conferences about what’s going on. It almost feels weird getting back to normal. I was so busy with flood stuff, that I never got a chance to see any national news. Was the national news just as impressed with the people in this area? A lot of people worked their asses to save our city, and we did. We won. We beat the flood. I sure hope it doesn’t hurt our chances as getting permanent flood protection though. It’s going to be expensive, but fighting these floods isn’t cheap either. I am curious what the final bill for the flood fight will be. It’s going to cost $400,000 just to clean up the Fargodome.
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Flood Fighting
The last two days have been hard. Fighting floods can be tough. Every muscle in my body aches. Last night was the first night this week that I got more than three hours of sleep. Many people have lost their homes, but for the most part, Fargo is doing pretty good today. The river rising has slowed, and it might have crested, but their not sure yet. It could still go up a bit if the weather warms up. The city is a mess. It’s like a war zone out there. Helicopters are patrolling the dikes, along with national guardsmen. Most of the dikes are built up high enough now. Now we just have to keep an eye on them 24/7. Sandbags are strategically placed throughout town to keep them warm and to have them ready to repair leaks as soon a possible. The river will remain high for a week or so.
Our house is pretty safe. We are five blocks or so away from the second line of dikes. I still moved most of our stuff up from the downstairs, and plugged all of our sewer drains down there, so we should be fine.
The people in this town are amazing though. Countless volunteers worked their ass off. Today they had to turn them away, because we have plenty of sandbags made up already for emergencies. At the beginning they were saying we would need 1.5 million sandbags to protect the city and they weren’t sure if we would be able to fill that many. Well, the last I heard volunteers have filled 3 million sandbags. Just amazing. Most of them were college and high school kids, but many people traveled from surrounding cities to help.
I love this city more than ever now. It truly is the people that make this city great. We are not out of it yet, but we are winning the battle. It would have been easily lost if it weren’t for the people. Everything was super organized. The city officials had great plans, and everybody in the city followed them. The two days that I was working with the volunteers not one of them complained, and some of them were on the third or fourth day of hard labor. Together we all fought to save our city, and for the most part we have. I’m not too sure if many other cities could have done what we have.
**Update**
Here are some great pictures of what we have been going through. -
2009 Flood
So you might have saw on the news that Fargo is flooding. Everybody around here is a little worried. The river is currently at 26.2 ft. Flood stage is 18. They are predicting it could reach 40. The record is 40.1 set back in 1897. Back in 1997 when Grand Forks got it bad, it got up to 39.6 here. I wasn’t living in Fargo at that time, so this is my first real major flood.
Our house is in the 500 year flood plain, but according to the maps, we should be safe at 41 and 42 ft. Our man problem would be if the lift stations can’t keep up and the sewer backs up into our basement. The closest lift station to our house is currently pumping water onto the street. That makes me a little worried. I drove around town trying to find plugs for our drains, and every place was sold out. I ran into a grocery store, and they were out of bottled water. Town is just nuts with everybody buying flood supplies and police cars escorting sand bag trucks. Schools are closed so the kids can go help fill sand bags. I would help, but I have to work tonight. I am hoping I can find some drain plugs at work tonight. I don’t know what the chances of our sewer back up is, but I would rather be safe than sorry.
The river is suppose to crest by Thursday or Friday. I will be glad when it starts going down. Fears of what happened to Grand Forks are not good. Floods are no fun.