Riders on the Storm

Well, the weather refuses to stop being a topic of discussion. There may be various traits defining Midwesterners, but talking about the weather has to be a dominant one.  Why? Probably because we get all seasons here – sometimes in the same day.

Driving home Saturday night was quite interesting since it was in a torrential downpour the likes of which I’d never driven in before. I thought the storm in Nova Scotia I drove in back in 2005 was impressive, but this topped it. Visibility was blizzard like with ten feet being the norm from Hokah to Yucatan. At first, I thought I’d gotten myself into hail, but it turned out the rain drops were simply huge. In the reflected glow of the headlights they looked like luminous hailstones. Thankfully, there were not or the car would be a mass of dents right now.

The drive also was the first time I’d experienced the Subaru Outback hydroplaning on all four wheels. With it being such a reliable mountain goat and with new tires, it was surprising. Good thing I’ve had a little experience steering a boat.

The current forecast is for heavy rains and potentially severe weather today and tomorrow. Yay. Like the garden needs to be more saturated than it already is. We are going to need a monster truck to navigate in it at this rate.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to edit the screen captures from Citizen Kane between storms today. It’ll be an even bigger task to weed them out, since I took far too many for a review!

Health 6-20-2011

Another Monday where I’m slow moving because the weekend takes it all out of me. But it was a good weekend, so I’m willing to pay the piper.  Pain index was high at 7 again, better today. I’d say I’m at 4-5 so far. Lower back is the main culprit but a slight headache is present. 

Being a human barometer, I could tell the weather was going to be bad today.

Them Changes

The old layout was looking dated and was always meant as a stop gap, but ended up never being changed. So looking around at Blogger’s templates, I realized they’d changed completely. Time to change things, methinks.

This is also a stop gap template and I may create a new background from my own photos if I find something that will work.  My concern is keeping the bandwidth down to speed loading. While dialup may be all but gone, I still believe in optimizing! This new background for the text will be easier on the eyes as well, another concern.

If I could figure out a way to make an easy on the eyes scheme with one of these pictures as a background, I would:

It is hard to beat the local scenery in Houston County. Since I took these, I have the larger originals that I can edit to the size needed.

But I doubt I’ll get around to it.

Health 6-17-2011

Since I’m trying to keep some kind of record of my health, I decided on a title format for it. Not remotely creative, but highly practical.

Been having a large increase in lower back pain dating about a week before the shingles outbreak. What’s bad about it is that it is stretching down the legs and is clearly a pinched nerve problem. Pain levels in general are still much higher since the outbreak with headaches becoming an almost daily occurrence.

Managed to do a 2.5 mile walk today – it has been a long time. Went better than expected, but barely dragged myself home once I hit the hill back. It took me over half an hour to stop shaking, which is worse than usual.

Pain levels are ranging from 5 to 7 out of 10 since the shingles. It looks like I need to rededicate myself to a daily meditation routine rather than a semi-regular one. Weather has not helped with storm systems bothering my back and joints.

An Era of No Trust or Too Much Trust?

I find myself pondering on how we live in an increasingly confusing time for most people. With trust in governments foundering world wide and growing here in the United States, uncertainty in the future is increasing the distrust of authorities. Well, that and their corrupt actions with Weiner being only the latest public figure to go down in flames. But on the other hand, there is still too much trust in the wildest of conspiracy theories and even more insidious to my thinking, the so called “experts” on any given subject.

The inability to sort fact from fiction has become something of a hallmark of our entertainment driven culture. Reality television is often very scripted (often at a pro wrestling level of sophistication) for one example. Hollywood has always distorted history in favor of drama and that has continued unabated in its junior sibling, television. 

Watching Citizen Kane and the accompanying documentary, talking to some friends about the new Area 51 book, and reading various stories in newspapers that spin facts into fiction has me thinking hard about people’s ability to discriminate what really is going on. I had hoped the worldwide Web would make it easier to find out the truth about things and it has to a very limited degree. With arm chair and accredited experts willing to make stories up out of whole cloth and/or lie to promote an agenda, there are far too many unsubstantiated “facts” available on the Internet. To counter this, it takes skill and an understanding of logic to sort out what is factual versus what is not. That’s a big problem.

Most people don’t make or have the time to dig deeply into a subject even if they knew how to. Human tendency is to leave work to others and then listen to an expert in the field. This is easier and far more convenient than jumping into trying to understand an unfamiliar subject. Add in the catastrophic failure that is our public education system that churns out illiterates from our high schools and colleges when we desperately need critical thinkers… Ugh.

Meanwhile, it is a big assumption to trust that an expert really does know what he is talking about in the first place. We have a lot of theoreticians espousing theories as proven facts or science all over the media. That’s how we get specious junk science such as anthropogenic global warming, mercury in vaccinations causing autism, and Keynesian financial stimulus packages. Note that all three have had proponents with a financial interest in their theory being accepted.

On a lesser, but still disturbing level are conspiracy theories that have gained considerably traction. Examples include Obama not being born in Hawaii, Trig Palin being Bristol’s child, the CIA being behind JFK’s assassination, AIDS being created by the US to wipe out Africans, and any number of chain emails that end up in your inbox. It seems like there is rarely a week that goes by that I don’t see some easily disproved thing in an email. But woe be unto you who try to counter with the truth!

The more dramatic the lie, the more easily it seems to be believed. And once that lie is believed, the harder it is to convince someone of the facts. I know a lot of good people who believe things that are completely untrue and get very upset when informed otherwise. Not upset at being deceived, but at me for challenging things. I admit that I’m burned out on trying to straighten things out and don’t try to as much as I once did.

So people are putting a lot of trust into untrustworthy things even as their trust of institutions dwindle. It makes me wonder if there is such a thing as a law of conservation of trust, where trust lost in one thing has to be transferred to another. We are choosing to trust in things we shouldn’t as a reaction to having our trust in institutions broken.

One thing is for certain, I’m seeing a lot of fear in people’s eyes these days and it really shows up when you start bringing up facts. It may simply be that people are running away from reality.  With a culture mired in perpetual adolescence, I really shouldn’t be surprised by this. So the moral of the story is that we need to be more skeptical and really devote attention to the things that matter. We have entered a time where running away may not be an option for much longer.

In Which I Write About Non-Disastrous Weather

It is nice to talk about the weather and not be complaining. The sun is shining and it is around 65 F out as I type this out.  Or more accurately, typo this out – thank you Windows Live Writer’s spellchecker. A week ago we were suffering from high 90’s and hit 100 on Tuesday with humidity to match.  Today is supposed to hit 75 F with 51% humidity which makes it nearly an ideal day, especially since it isn’t raining.  I’ve had enough rain this year to make me think I live in Seattle.

Snooky, our resident white cat, is wanting me to hold her again. This happens many times a day and she can get quite persistent about. The suggestion to go play outside was ignored, so I’m ignoring her in return.

But back to the weather! It has been a strange year with spring barely making an appearance and the transition to summer being abrupt. So it is nice to have temperatures as low as we are having at the moment. Well, nice for humans, not so nice for plants in the garden or crops in the field.  We hit 48 F for a low yesterday and are seeing lows in the 50’s.

From what I’ve been reading, wheat and corn crops are in trouble this year, so expect shortages and price increases. The wet and low temperatures have set back planting badly in the Midwest, while drought and flooding down south are adding to the woes. Not quite disastrous, but worrisome nonetheless.

Last year, I didn’t get to enjoy summer very much thanks to my health and I’d hoped for a better year in getting outside. So far that hasn’t worked out between health and rain. On good days it rains, on bad days it is sunny out and it seems I can’t win. I am turning into a literally whiter shade of pale.

At least the mild temperatures will allow some more time in painting miniatures and models upstairs in the un-air conditioned work room!

Misleading Ads and Dayton’s Shadow PAC

Starting this week, I’ve been getting targeted ads in several places I visit on the Net.  They all say “Tell Sen. Jeremy Miller to stand up for the middle class.”  Next to the white text on a somber black background is a poorly dithered grayscale portrait shot of Jeremy with a “Click to learn more.”

Click on it and it takes you to a dishonest video attacking Senator Miller and extolling our rather strange governor’s plan -- which isn’t a balanced budget but instead features massive spending increases.  It is fascinating seeing a rookie Republican State Senator come under attack this way. To me, it shows he is doing a good job at being fiscally responsible in a very bad economic situation. That’s more than I can say about Governor Dayton as he’d rather have a shutdown than not pander to the special interests that got him elected.

This soak the rich campaign shows how utterly out of touch the socialist Democratic Party people have become. You will never hear someone talk about how a poor man gave them their job… Wait, there is one way for that to be true. Overtax and over spend and pretty soon everyone will be poor except the politicians and unionized government workers.  Technically, the public is supposed to be the employer, right? So if we are all poor… Well you get the picture.

Funny how the Alliance for a Better Minnesota is a union funded PAC out to help Mark Dayton. Are they looking out for the best interest of the people of Minnesota or their own pocket books? The answer is pretty clear.

Senator Miller is standing for the middle class, the people who have to balance their budgets and don’t have infinite credit to borrow from.