Author: luke

Born in Iowa City a few days after John Kennedy was shot and killed. Grew up in Minneapolis, on Lake Calhoun. Southwest High. University of MN. Lived in a two-room cabin in the woods on Lake Superior. Cabin on South Long Lake. There's a lake theme developing here.

My Metric Education

This article absolutely cracked me up only because it never occurred to me that as I read nutrition labels I wasn’t really converting anything whatsoever and knowing what I was ingesting, but instead just comparing metric with metric, label with label, which left me entirely in the dark as to anything other than how one can of soda compares to another, etc. I’m guessing that there are many here among us who are in the same boat.

That being said, I’m still a fan of the metric system and would love to see us embrace it, but culturally it is a ninety-degree uphill battle, I fear. What I do know – and I learned this way back in the seventies – is that the 165 gram frisbee is best for windy days and that 7 grams is a quarter ounce (which I also learned in the seventies).

What Dick Cheney and Barack Obama Obviously Know – That may be News to Us

“We may think we vote in line with our economic interests and social values, but our politics may be driven largely by our biological makeup. University of Nebraska researchers measured how aroused the nervous systems of highly conservative and liberal voters became while they viewed positive images, such as pictures of babies or cute animals, and negative scenes featuring car wrecks or fearsome insects. The conservatives showed greater interest in negative images, while the liberals responded more strongly to positive ones. When researchers showed both groups collages that intermingled positive and negative images while tracking their eye movements, they found that conservatives focused on the more alarming material. Even on a physiological level, conservatives appear to spend more energy ‘monitoring things that make them feel uncomfortable,’ psychologist Mike Dodd tells LiveScience.com. That may make them more receptive to campaigns that stress their fears, while liberals are more drawn to hopeful plans for the future. ‘It’s amazing the extent to which they perceive the world differently,’ said political scientist John Hibbing, who helped design the study.”

The Week
February 24, 2010

Why I Love Minnesota #72

The top-performing stock of the past 25 years isn’t Apple or Microsoft. It’s Minnesota-based hardware supplier Fastenal, which is up 38,565 percent since the market crash of 1987. Told of the distinction, 72-year-old founder Bob Kierlin said, “Oh, wow. Gee. Well, thanks. That’s great news.”

 

know then thyself, presume not cinema to scan

Anything that tries to take over more than one of your senses at a time is suspect – and that’s why I just don’t trust television – because it gives me both sound and vision; and that means I don’t need to do shit and that’s bad; that’s rather fucking passive. And I’m not passive. Books, radio and music allow me to imagine the images; visual art allows me to insert dialogue, create my own soundtrack, to over-dub whatever it is that I’m thinking about it. Television and movies are like how them sad little chickens destined for our convenience are fed, what with their beaks being ripped off and tubes punched down their little gaping maws so they eat and eat and eat-right exactly what we’re telling those untrustworthy all-too-skinny little chickens to eat. Eat up! Pay attention! You don’t need to do a thing. Just sit quietly.

I love people, but

I think I’ve had an epiphany of sorts – or maybe I was just able to put into a simple, tidy little phrase something I’ve known all of my life, but haven’t quite understood so simply. That is, I love individuals, but I don’t care for groups of people. In fact, I really don’t like groups of people much at all. I may even hate them – mostly. This is why I’ve always said, and with some weird pride, “I’m not a joiner.” I would often then go on to enumerate that which I will not join: I don’t want to be a part of your religion, book club, biker gang, ultimate frisbee team and so on and so on. It is not that I don’t like those in and of themselves, but I do not want to be a part of them. But at the same time, I love the individuals who make them up. Well, not all of them of course, but would give them all the benefit of the doubt, not as the group, but as individuals, in the beginning.

I am definitely suspicious of groups. They are unnerving for a host of very good reasons: They are dangerous; they are often possessed by mob mentality (even in small groups); they are often self-righteous; they allow individuals to be lazy and force others to pick up their slack, they are physically large and can lose control of that physicality, and on and on. Think groupthink. That is not to say that I am some sort of whacked-out every man for himself libertarian, or rugged individualist (whatever that means) as I’m really not all that rugged and I do love those I love dearly – my family, my close friends and co-workers – and I love to be around them. I even understand the need for and desire to help one another as individuals and even as a society (big group, that one).

But still I chafe at the little trappings of groups; god save me if I have to dress like a group of people beyond whatever I would normally choose for myself; scheduled and regular meetings I am certain each knock a good 20 minutes (beyond the wasted time of the meeting itself) off the end of my life; I can feel my ultimate demise inching toward me each time I am forced into a group experience not of my choosing. Little bits of me die within.

And I wonder even at the logistics of it all! How on god’s green earth do people round up large groups for biking, or ultimate frisbee, or to re-enact some bygone battle with muskets and period outfits(!) for that matter? That is a great mystery to me, but then again I am imagining 45 me’s at the end of the phone line receiving the invite: “Hey, wanna come out and meet a bunch of us at…” Nope.

But let me say again, I’m not anti-people – just anti-bunches-of-people. I’m also averse to concerts, sporting events, bullfights – wherever great hoards of humanity pile into a confined space. One could be crushed! I love the idea of Woodstock, but would have blown my head off to have had to be there for more than 15 or so minutes – even clean and sober; add some acid or mushrooms or even whatever weed they were smoking back then to that experience and I might have simply physically honestly exploded into individual atoms rather suddenly, simply ceasing to exist entirely.

People who know me gave up long ago inviting me to join anything. And I don’t think they love me less for it. I think they, as individuals, accept that. As a group, they could turn up at my door in the middle of the night with pitchforks and torches and stakes and demands of my skills for ultimate frisbee every other Thursday down at Como Park – rain or shine! What a nightmare!

Nina in the Bright Light of Day

See! This is what we're talking about! Jammies, that semi-retarded star, good stuff!

Oh, no, Nina, say it ain’t so! After climbing into bed last night with the relaxing nocturnal Nina from Sprout’s Goodnight Show, the soft purring nighttime assurances, the quiet smiles, the come-hither seduction exuding from her every evening pore, I woke this morning to a veritable horse’s head in my sodden bed. Nina! On the Sprout Morning Show!

Not unlike waking drunk next to a barely remembered one-night stand yanked from a bar stool at 2 AM and drug home in a fit of whatever happens happens, stinking of booze and soda pop, make-up smeared over the pillow and in some sort of creepy jackson pollockian face, there was Nina, filled with grating morning glee! Her voice an octave higher and 25 decibels louder. No! Get out of my house! Get out of our shared imaginary bed, you shape-shifter! You siren whose rocky shores come to light only as the sun rises, but, oh, oh, oh, much too late my trusting soul!

Ugh! There she is feigning to duck from the fake raindrops and hamming and hugging her shoulders for the cold ear-muffed phony sun; soon she’ll be high-fiving Chica and spewing inanities like “You go, girl!”

In the evening, she’d have smiled at the drops of rain and simply and elegantly wrapped herself in a warm subdued shawl and assured us all that it would be all right as we drifted off to sleep together to the rhythm of the raindrops on the sturdy rooftop.

But alas, the veil has been lifted, the make-up scraped off, and this lady of the evening walks unsteadily in the bright light of day. The decent people turn their heads; others gawk. Who is she? Why is she here? For shame she is here! For shame!

Hey! I wonder what’s going on over at Nick, Jr.!