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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.
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Money Pet Peeves
One of my biggest pet peeves is people that don’t live within their means. I see it al the time on Twitter. People that can barely afford rent, and then they are spending $2000 on a MacBook Air. I just don’t get it. To me having a nice chunk of money in savings is important. It’s just nice knowing we would be fine for a while financially if something bad should happen.
I also hate when people spend money stupidly. Smoking is gross and bad for you, but mostly it’s expensive. I was talking with the wife the other day and we calculated that her parents probably spend $600-$800 on cigarettes a month. That is crazy. Her parents live in a run down trailer, they barely have a pot to piss in. Neither of them have good paying jobs, but they should be doing better than they are. They have no car or house payment, and no kids at home. I don’t know what kind of credit card debt they have, but I do know smoking and weekly trips to the casino can’t be helping.
Thankfully her parents are happy. They would drop everything in a second to help out one of their kids. They don’t care about material possessions. I often think I care too much about my material possessions. I often feel guilty that I am able to live in a nice house, have nice things, and more toys than any person really needs. I guess that’s the benefit of always being responsible, getting an education so I could get a good job, and not doing stupid things with my money.
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Where is the Good Music
Maybe I am just getting old or something, but music lately has really sucked. I haven’t really found anything good lately. The Forever the Sickest Kids album was pretty good. I like the new Sing it Loud, Jack’s Mannequin, and Punchline albums, but I haven’t found anything super amazing is quite some time.
The one amazing album that I have discover the past year has been Amanda Palmer’s Who Killed Amanda Palmer. For some strange reason I didn’t check it out right when it came out. I wasn’t a huge Dresden Dolls fan, so I didn’t think I would care for her much. Boy was I wrong. I can’t get enough of Amanda Palmer and am starting to get into the Dresden Dolls now.
The cool thing about Amanda is that she blogs regularly, is on twitter @amandapalmer, and even uses TwitPic from time to time. Last week she even showed us her cool undies. She had a blog post a couple weeks ago with a bunch of her videos in it. So go and watch them and enjoy the greatness that is Amanda Palmer.
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Happy π Day
Today is the day we celebrate the the Greek letter that is used as the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Or in other words π.
And another cool coincidence is that it also happens to be Albert Einstein’s birthday.
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Is It Spring Yet?
So we are in the middle of a pretty big blizzard. Damn near everything in town is closed. All non-essential employees were sent home from work. Sadly, I am an essential employee. I didn’t get to go home early. When it was time to go home, my little two-wheel-drive truck wasn’t going anywhere. I had to get a ride home. When I got home the snow was waist deep on our sidewalk, and drifts in our back yards are as high as the fence. I would takes some pictures, but is still pretty nasty out. Maybe tomorrow.