And to continue from yesterday....

What's most frightening is the complete and utter disconnect in people's minds. What used to be extreme is now commonplace; and I mean the forms of evangelical and fundamentalist christianity where items such as the rapture and revelations are discussed openly and rationally, as if they are rational subjects rather than the frankly insane topics that they are. But these are just the most extreme. I am always amazed at the lack of historical background people know about this supposedly sacred text...that Paul the apostle did not know jesus, that instead several decades after the death of said son of god he had a vision of him on the road....or the millennium long rule of the catholic church and what it became, or the traveling preacher who derived eschatology from the bizarre allegory that is revelations....they only know what some whackjob preacher tells them...they know nothing of basic subjects like geology, microbiology, or frankly even frontal systems in weather. The wealth of ignorance abound in an ordinary group of people could fuel an empire for centuries if convertible....and I am not speaking of a wrestling audience.

Ostrich people.......


Living where I do, I am constantly surrounded by ignorance, superstition and that truly scary phenomenon called modern christianity. It is placed in such importance that grammar checkers don't like it spelled with lower case as in this case. But I am tired. I am frustrated. I am long since beyond anger having at a young age tired of debating the morons who sat outside of my yard attempting to debate me while I shot baskets. I would sit alone in class as the rest would leave school heading to confirmation. Lately, I've been surrounded again. God does this. God does that. God is wonderful. God thinks this. God thinks that. I just broke up with someone after they had highlighted biblical quotations denouncing homosexuality and passed them on to someone else. I am no longer tolerant. It is time to end this drivel.

At every point of a former causal explanation formerly attributed to god, investigation has shown the cause to be material. Every disease that used to be caused by evil spirits was found to be either completely false ( as in witchcraft) or with some other cause...i.e. the bubonic plague. Despite this, we still have arm waving, jesus praising, snake handling sycophants praising the lord and begging for the rapture and salvation...to the tunes of billions of dollars in property and cold, hard cash. They will happily solve addictions, paralysis and solve marriage incompatibility. All this while driving off in a limo. Now, many will say, that is only a minority, and look at the good it does....a simple question is this.....why wouldn't the same resources be just as effective doing good for the sake of good, justified by real explanations? Why does it have to be done in the name of a 2000 yr old dead jew whose own people said was obviously not the messiah, who no one who spread the word about later on actually knew ( Paul, decades after the fact) and also showed a mean streak.

There are entire communities with megachurches who somehow tie jesus in with the ability to drive suv's and purchase cheap goods paid for by essentially slave labor at walmart. When you observe this, it is obvious that the enlightenment has not affected much of the U.S. It is a bizarre combination of overt materialism, jesus worship and the tenets of the whackjob right of the republican party. There was more intellectual honesty during the american revolution than now.....more later......

Ok....so I have been busy. A dry year means fires, and I have been dipping into that bottomless pit of gold for a couple months now, along with my regular gig. Frankly, I am sick of defending monied idiocy from its own stupidity. I will give you a quick source, though there are many more: Roger G. Kennedy's " Wildfire and Americans: How to Save Lives, Property and your Tax Dollars". Read it, get angry and weep. No, I haven't been up north at Cavity Lake. I've been working locally, defending the world from canary grass fires and ramshackle farms. Mostly I've been sitting on my butt. Waiting. All this is justified in the Billions of tax dollars spent by numerous local, state and federal agencies protecting those who have chosen to move into fire traps, encouraged by insane land policies, transportation systems and the most unholy and useless creature to ever walk the earth, the real estate developer.

There is one reason over 500 people have been fighting the fire at Cavity lake to the tune of over 5 million dollars. It is not to save us from a catastrophe. It is to save rich property owners of the Gunflint. They are not being charged one extra red cent for this largesse...they can claim their property taxes are paying it, but it comes nowhere close to what has been spent the last 7 years in stationing aircraft, crews, prescribed burn operations and the administration of the entire affair, which easily runs into the eight digits in terms of cost. You, the taxpayers of other places, the hardworking stiffs, are paying so these very wealthy people can build their million dollar boondoggles in one of the most fire-prone regions in North America.


And we encourage people to do this. We say it is ok. And this is true throughout America; witness the insanity of southern California or Arizona.

I have witnessed one occasion where a property owner became angered over our resistance to engage a fire to save a chicken coop surrounded by 8 foot tall canary grass, We were supposed to heroically endanger ourselves to save this hut from the owners' stupidity.


I have simple solution: bill people for the cost of protection. For the next ten years, all property owners on the west side of the Gunflint shall pay their fair share at tax time. If you have a mansion on Seagull lake, you get a monster. All 7 years of costs since the 1999 blowdown shall be recouped. Your bill is a cool million. A small shack, your bill is smaller.

I am sick of sucking soot for these wealthy spoilt morons. Let their property burn.

Today it is illegal immigrants. Frankly, I don't know how Mexicans can be illegals. These people look like skins, and somehow people who are indigenous being suddenly illegal is the usual insanity perpetrated by white anglo-americans. Many of them are, in fact, indios, just from south of the border. They simply want and need to make a living. Having been around many of them, they work hard, often under punishing conditions, thousands of miles from home. I always ask the question: " Would someone do this unless they had to?". Considering most of their heritage, they have much more of a natural right to be on this continent than any white american. So instead of bitching about them, I am going to propose that we ship certain anglo-Americans back to a colony more akin to their needs, sort of like a white Liberia. This will also reduce skin cancer care costs, for I am shipping them to the Norwegian island of Svalbard, where their white flesh will produce vitamin d in the cloud cover.

First up is Sen. Marty Siefert, republican from Marshall, MN. He often calls himself the representative of Joe Six Pack. A couple years ago he sponsored an amendment to make the drivers test english only. I wonder how many hours were wasted on this piece of crap legislation, instead of just hiring a couple of spanish speaking testers. Observing his last name, I demand that he be tested from now on in his native german. He also complains about welfare people, doesn't like abortion, and is your typical backward ass repub. Frankly, I don't want Joe sixpack running things. I see him now at the end of the bar, his cheesy white gut hanging out from under his shirt, babbling incoherently over his beer about them " damned meshicansth". He complains about welfare while receiving commodity subsidies courtesy of the taxpayer. He drives his oversize vehicle on taxpayer built roads, fueled by dead soldier payed for oil, all the while bitching about the price. His wife will tell you he is as stupid as a retarded goat, but she loves him anyway. We really don't want him running things. Nor do we want Siefert, as his representative. It is time for his return to his native North European landscape . Off to Svalbard with you.

Next is U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin. Here is a real nutball. The American Nazi party occasionally complains he is appropriating their program. He is into government power, as in the Patriot act, and thinks congress should have the right to police judges, really meaning he and his friends should decide what is right. He has introduced legislation wanting to criminalize all so-called illegals. Since his ancestors came from another continent, without authorization from the peoples here, I have decided he must go to Svalbard also. So must any of his friends, family, and cronies. And his dog. And any of his inbred cheesehead cousins. All U.S. House of rep. republicans must go also. You want a nice pure world, you can have it.

This is typical. Only rightwing nutball descendants of those who committed genocide could conclude that people who are indigenous are illegal. These two are just the beginning. At least half the white population of South Dakota should go also, for they are nothing but the white trash descendants of land thieves. Only they have to go to Novaya Zemyla, the arctic island used by the Soviets as a weapons teasting ground. That we have a good start.

To a headier topic. I suffered through Michael Crichtons work, "State of fear", last week. In it he expounds, voiced mostly in a superhuman MIT academic turned superagent ( an interesting psychological subject itself), on the evils of environmentalism and climate change. He also adds appendices and editorials at the back of the book with his views on the entire subject. I will avoid the book itself, for it is mostly stereotyped characters and opinion disguised as storyline. It will appeal nicely to paranoid rightwingers with caricatured actors and lawyers and evil earth-first types committing murder and mayhem.

Crichton is often looked highly upon due to his credentialed M.D. status and obviously widely read scientific background. Lately he has become the darling of the flat earth -no environmental crisis crowd due to this book and his public appearances denouncing any environmental problems. He also castigates environmentalists for stopping development in poorer countries, essentially calling them theives and liars for using the tools of development while stopping or berating others from doing so.


First, Crichton has never been a practicing scientist, his books being fiction based on theoretical science. His MD is from over 30 years ago, hardly a qualification to engage in peer based criticism of complex a subject as climate change theory and modeling. Within his critique,( and this is risky because I am actually treating his opinion as worthy of scientific criticism), he performs the greatest error of any science: selection and omission, or simply put, the failure to include and deal with all available evidence. He omits what counters his idea, and brings forth what supports it. He then attacks the entire subject as being based on groupthink and the need for scientists to get grants. His main evidence is that some locations are cooler, or have shown a cooling trend within some recent periods. This, of course, does not deal with all the other places that have shown to be getting warmer, in fact much warmer, over vastly larger areas, or that many of these reading coincide with predictions of various models. Finally is his general theory that land use changes account for most temperature increases, there is no crisis, ddt got a bad name, species are not going extinct, old growth is bad, and in 100 years the world will be a better place.

Drivel. Plain and simple.

Ideas are powerful. And some are dangerous. This is one of Crichtons main themes in the book. His argument throughout is the environmental crisis is a creation of propaganda now fed by momentum and money. On no page does he deal with the quality and quantity of forests, the numbers of species gone or going extinct, the numbers and amount of toxins, the disappearance of once vast reserves like the cod of the Grand Banks, or any other actual details. This is a figment all of our imagination, and specifically that of a rich Hollywood elite and scientists bent on making a living through our tax dollars. One of his characters exclaims that that the natives, by burning, were expressing the knowledge that "old forests sucked". This is frightening, because I thought perhaps as an MD, he might have a limited understanding of biology and ecology. Old forests "suck" only for certain species and only for certain human uses. Biologically, they are just as rich as any ecosystem, only for different species. As far as human uses, it depends on whom is using them and when and what for. Life itself grants no judgement. Often, it is the indigenous who cry the greatest when the world is plowed over by the industrial.

Nowhere does he leap farther than in his criticism of a mysterious cabal of environmentalists denying the poor of the world the right to develop. The poor of the world often wish to develop, or merely to continue on with their lives without the harassment of our major corporations, who extract, pollute, exploit and drive the locals off their land. If any one group denies the poor of the world, it is the right wing who Crichton aligns himself with. Represented by corporations, the WTO, and other similar organizations, it is they who do not develop for the sake of people, but extract and exploit for profit. Witness the places with great resources. Somehow the profits never make it to the locals. It is the right wing in this country who refuse to allow funding for simple birth control, or lower cost aids drugs. Perhaps Crichton should avail himself of the evidence and speak out about these subjects.

Next Posting: Bjorn Lomborg, one of Crichtons favorite victims.

I guess I should have a camera. On the first plot this morning, three male turkeys were walking in the middle of an asphalt county road displaying. One had a nice 6 inch or so beard. The largest, who could look into the window of my car, had a beard that was shredded. The third, I did not get a good look. They did not run from my car. They came walking towards my car, seemingly curious, or, it seemed, bent on aggression. Then it dawned on me: game farm birds. No wild bird would act like this. This is a continuing american tradition. After wrecking the habitat so no native species can live, wannabe game managers decide they know better and start releasing whatever they wish. Then we get Tom turkeys who walk on the highway and approach cars. Or feral pigs. Or chukars. Or whatever else any yokel decides to let loose. The largest came right to my window and looked in. I was tempted to grab him, whack him and cook him, but without long gloves and the size of those spurs ( well over an inch long), I passed. I also wonder if people in the area had fed them from vehicles the way they approached me. They were gobbling away, doing full fanning displays. Anyone who has seen this knows how impressive this is, with an almost drum-like whoosh sound as the feathers extend. I was looking for sharptails of course, and had to get out to glass the fields. They did not run, but kept moving, intent on where they were going, gobbling and displaying. I wondered how fast a predator would devour these idiots, like american suburbanites let loose in a cannibalistic culture, easily trapped by fake drive up fast food windows. Ahhhhh.....to only dream. Maybe I should release large predatory felines raised on a diet of human flesh....

The next plot was perfect for sharptails, with over two square miles of open field and brushland. The damned things were in the middle of the road dancing, with another in the field 75 yeards away hitting the ground so hard it sounded like a drum rather than the light stepping you always hear. Besides that were the usuals, the snipe doing display flights, sandhills, geese, ducks and a few I couldn't identify.

The final noxious highlight of the morning was the local city's sewage lagoons, wafting the odor of a ten day old unflushed toilet a half mile down the road. I neglected to make that my stopping point.

So now to Atv's and other "off-road vehicles". Being an outdoorsman in both work and life, I spend over two thousand hours in the field a year. Noone better dare tell me that I am seeing only the negative. I have seen fishing areas destroyed, wildlife habitat converted into mudpits, entire hills turned into erosion channels, public property wrecked, all done by these benignly named technological freaks. I have yet to see any good. No broken homes have been reconciled, food production isn't up, no diseases have been cured and not a single orphan has been housed due to these devices. In fact, precious liquid hydrocarbons, metals and plastics, all finite resources, are instead squandered away into something that does nothing but destroy the landscape. A simple test is perhaps needed. If someone can show me any place or time where habitat has been improved, a spawning ground made better or more ruffed grouse choose to live in symbiosis with atv use rather than a 1000 acre aspen forest, perhaps I might alter my opinion. I doubt anyone will come up with an example. What Atv's are about is adrenaline. One argument often used is that recreational vehicle drivers enjoy the outdoors also. They don't. They enjoy going through the outdoors at speed on a petro-combustion vehicle. When one is on top of an operating engine, with helmet, glove and goggles, and driving said vehicle, it is quite difficult to discern the sights, sounds and lives of nature, except for those creatures running away from you. When one looks, listens, and enjoys nature, they usually use their senses, i.e. eyes, ears and perhaps the nose. This is slightly more effective than moving at 40 mph on a machine producing upwards of 70 decibels, head encased in a helmet.

I will avoid other pro- atv arguments as they are empty at best, and great examples of a drunk's reasoning at worst.

The problem with atv's is their very nature. Easy to operate and able to go just about anywhere, any slack-jawed yokel,over-amped teenager or beer swilling troglodyte can hop on and tear up the world. It is like handing a group of sixteen year old boys a fifty caliber machine gun and saying " don't hurt anyone now". Just because something is fun doesn't mean people should be allowed to do it.

What truly irks me to no end is that every time I buy gas in Minnesota, part of the taxes I pay goes not improving roads or bridges, remediating the habitat lost to their construction, assisting in transporting people to work or products to market, but to be handed over to local atv clubs to pay for their personal playgrounds. Often with little or no oversight. Their lobbying power, combined with that of certain legislators and two in-state manufacturers, has bought them taxpayer cash and land use with no essential limit.

Now we have another proposal.

I apologize to the rest of the state for having the same hometown as its proponent. Senator Tom Bakk, Cook-DFL, has introduced legislation to increase the percentage of tax revenue going subsidizing this insanity. It is most likely aimed to help the tourist industry in the north, for it really helps none except resort, gas station, and restaraunt and bar owners, whilst annoying everyone else and destroying nature. We need to simply call this what it is: welfare for the few who benefit from this. It is nothing more.

At this time, with much of our infrastructure underfunded for decades, with continued sprawl, with no access to health care for much of the population, that this is even brought to the floor is frightening. This is what a legislator does? Hand out more cash to an already questionable enterprise? ( See the various articles on lack of oversight regarding trail clubs available at the Minnesotans for Resonsible Recreation website).

It seems our only hope is that gasoline be pushed to such prices it becomes a productonly for useful work. Maybe this only will stop this latest attack on our resources, both land and the public dollar.

Welcome. I am currently ensconced at a relatives watching her dog and running around east central Minnesota looking for sharptail grouse ( my latest foray into wildlife). I have learned that one) I do not wish to have a manufactured home surrounded by junk vehicles and two) there is very little room for species that cannot handle human disturbance. Finally, humans have too much free access to heavy equipment. Given free reign, they turn any landscape into a flattened field or a muddy mess in quick time, then place a sign naming it "Happy Time farm" or "Scenic Valley", usually after denuding the place of any beauty and building a mcmansion on it. Don't even get me started on atv's..I'll save that for next time.