educating eric

Came across the article " Minnesota Aims to be Model for Wind Transport " and when I saw the photo of the nacelle (don't ask me how to pronounce that) on the flatbed semi I realized, "That's what we saw coming down the freeway!" On at least two separate trips, Ruth and I spotted these coming the opposite direction, and had no idea what they are. They look like a missile cone, except that no missile would have things jutting off the side of it...

UPDATE: 03.20.2009 Carrie Rindal has been reprimanded! The KARE-11 story disabled comments after at least 62 came in (according to the homepage), so let's see if we can get a conversation going here. Longtime readers of my blog know that I have a passion for pointing out police incompetence, arrogance and abuse of power -- not because I hate police, but because I have so much respect for them and their jobs (having both friends and relatives on the force) and I can't stand it when a few bad apples freak out and do something stupid that gives their uniform a bad name. Carrie Rindal is one such "peace" officer. When driving his kids home on New Year's Eve (as I was doing with Ruth and our girls a month ago), Sam Salter made one mistake: He followed the same instructions I've read dozens of places. If you're hit with lights and sirens from a squad car, you to find a safe place to pull off the road and should get off on the nearest exit if you can. (And, a...

For those of you who keep up with my Twitter feed , you already know that I'm lamenting the loss of one of our young guys from our church congregation. (Details of his suicide are at his school's site .) I didn't know Eric Harms well. When I was doing video work at our church , he was occasionally singing on worship team or performing in a drama. Everything that people have said in his Facebook group seems true -- he was nice and funny and talented. So, a whole bunch of various thoughts come to mind, all jumbled together: Suicide is really, really hurtful for the people left behind. Are we "glamorizing suicide" by the outpouring of love for Eric and support for his family? Was Eric's happiness a "shell" or an act? Or did something change recently? Is suicide prevention really possible? I'd bet money that suicidal people thing something like, "It was a poor choice for him, but it's the only option for me." And a mor...

Image by Tea, two sugars via Flickr I don't usually pay much attention the the Sunday circulars, but the one from Office Max caught my attention: They're offering 24"x36" prints, which are usually about $40, for $9.99. Being the fan of infrared photography that I am, part of me wonders if I should risk hyper-vanity and print some of my photos that size. The resolution of my photos really can't handle something that size, but then again, what can? Note, by the way, that the photo here isn't one of mine; it's one that was recommended by Zemanta , which is a Firefox plug-in that goes out and finds content that's related to whatever you're writing about. I wanted to play with it, and had to write about something that made enough sense that it had a chance of finding some content. So far, so good. :) Related articles by Zemanta 7 Inspiring Infrared and HDR Photographers (lightbulbs.org) The Strange Realm of Infra-Red: 4 (boingboing....

There's a story of a horrible case in Texas which, I'm sure, repeats itself all over the country each day: 6-month-old child abused by his parents. And terribly abused: "A physician noted that David Coronado Jr. had 42 skeletal injuries." So, a court-appointed guardian has asked that he be removed from life support because it's "in his best interests". His parents don't agree, but I think they forfeited their rights somewhere before the broken bone count reached 42. Anyway, the AP article makes a really odd reference: "If he survives his injuries, he will have severe and permanent disability as a result of these injuries," a doctor wrote in one report, the newspaper said. So, because the child will be disabled, we should kill him now? I understand the notion of removing life support if there's no hope of living... but isn't the act of removing life support because of future disabilities akin to an abortion about 7 months too la...

Walking in to the office this morning, I realized that it's been ages since I've thrown an update into this blog. Most of my day-to-day updates are in Twitter now, but I've got a few "ponderings" that wouldn't make sense to put there... so, here they are. The Thanksgiving break was outstanding -- a good stretch of down-time to reflect and catch up on various projects. (Even simple things like getting the oil changed in both vehicles and making sure the snow blower starts are nice to check off the "to-do" list.) Today is a "December with integrity" day -- it's not "bitterly cold", but it's cold enough to trigger the "winter is here" response. Winter isn't my favorite season, but I can handle it just fine. Unfortunately, the side streets up here in St. Paul are incredibly slippery thanks to the light snow we got yesterday. Last week I had coffee with Albert Maruggi , which started out as a conversation abo...

Okay, I had just the strangest conversation with a very nice young woman at a research firm who called to pre-qualify me for a study. It was on "digital media," and I figured I'd probably have a good shot at attending something like that given my life and job. That is, until we hit the last question, which was so incoherent that I had to ask what she meant: "Have you ever hacked a web site, or created an internet solution that doesn't exist?" Huh? I think I know what they mean by "hack a web site", and I can say "No" to that in that I've never cracked a web site... though at work I've had to "reverse engineer" some of our web applications or repurpose them for a different class/program, and if you define "hacking" as "innovatively adapting," that probably qualifies. But, anyway... what does it mean to "create an internet solution that doesn't exist"? Like, "Are you a web developer...