Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Tag: Random

  • Does North Dakota even exist?

    This started as a humorous conversation with coworkers; I don’t remember exactly how it came up, but one coworker talked about a family trip to visit all the states but somehow missed North Dakota. This of course prompted doubts as to its actual existence.

    The rest of us confirmed that we, also, have never been to North Dakota, and to further cast doubts, nobody knows anyone from there either.

    But then I googled “does North Dakota exist” and it got, well, weird.

    Who, what, why: Is North Dakota really a US state? (From 2011):

    North Dakota is amending its constitution because of a long-standing technical omission that some claim makes its statehood invalid. So does that mean it’s really just a US territory and not a state at all?

    Every American child is taught there are 50 states in the US.

    But an 82-year-old care home resident in Grand Forks, North Dakota, is throwing the truth of that universally held statement into some doubt.

    While reading the state constitution, which is 40 years older than he is, John Rolczynski noticed it omitted to mention the executive branch when explaining which new officers need to take the oath supporting the US Constitution.

    This, he says, makes the state constitution invalid because it is in conflict with the federal constitution, which requires all officers of the three branches of state government – executive, judicial and legislative – be bound by the oath.

    Mr Rolczynski’s detective work began in 1995. Sixteen years later, state senator Tim Mathern of Fargo has successfully introduced a bill to amend section 4 of article XI of the state constitution.

    The amendment has been passed by the state legislature and must now be approved by the people of North Dakota at the general election in 2012.

    So North Dakota was arguably not legally a state until ten years ago. Who knew?

  • There’s a Steampunk Festival in Weed, CA

    There’s a Steampunk Festival in Weed, CA

    Chalk this one up under “events I did not expect”: Weed, California has an annual Steampunk Festival, and it returns this year on May 21-22. Yep, the same town that hosts an annual 420 Festival (on April 20, naturally) somehow has a festival celebrating steampunk. Because of course it does.

    Weed has about 2,900 people, give or take, and is located in the far north end of the state, near the base of Mt. Shasta. It’s a relatively diverse town, compared to the rest of that region of northern California, but geographically speaking this still seems unlikely.

    If there weren’t still a pandemic, I’d consider checking it out.

  • WTH?

    Zoom in on the Google Map of Corvallis, Oregon, near downtown and this is what you’ll see:

    Corvallis Map WTH

    Er, what? How on earth did “Illinois” and “Nebraska” get in there?

  • Cascadia, State of Jefferson and other secessionist movements

    Being in Portland several times over the past several weeks for beer happenings got me thinking about the (mostly inconsequential) debate about “Cascadian Dark Ales” (versus the other names of “Black IPA”, “American Black Ale” and so on) and about the “Cascadia” part of that name. See, here in the Pacific Northwest “Cascadia” can refer to the Cascadia independence movement, which according to Wikipedia:

    Cascadia is the proposed name for an independent nation located within the Cascadian bioregion of the Pacific Northwest region of North America. Proposed boundaries differ, with some drawn along existing political state and provincial lines, and others drawn along larger ecological, cultural and economic boundaries.

    The nation would be created by secession of British Columbia from Canada, along with Oregon, Washington and portions of other states from the United States. At its maximum extent Cascadia would extend from the coastal Alaskan Panhandle to the north, extending into Northern California in the south, and inland to include parts of Alberta, the Yukon, Idaho and Western Montana.

    This also made me think about the State of Jefferson—another proposed secessionist movement that would combine part of southern Oregon with Northern California:

    The State of Jefferson was a proposed U.S. state that would span the contiguous, mostly rural area of southern Oregon and northern California, where several attempts to secede from Oregon and California, respectively, have taken place in order to gain own statehood.

    I find these sorts of movements (ideas? memes?) fascinating on all sorts of levels, partially because they seem so wildly improbable and partially because it’s sort of a glimpse into an alternate reality (which piques my science fiction interest). And yet both Cascadia and Jefferson State are fairly recent phenomenons, which give them an air of plausibility for something that could be accomplished in my lifetime. Wildly improbable plausibility, as I noted, but still.

    For these and other historical U.S. alternate realities, Wikipedia’s list of secession proposals is a fun read.

  • Items of recent awesomeness

    Some of these links aren’t as shiny-new as they were when I started this post, but even so:

    The CDC’s zombie apocalypse preparedness plan: Yes, the CDC is all over the possibility of a zombie apocalypse. For real.

    If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine).

    Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn move trailer: I knew Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson were making a Tintin movie, but I didn’t realize just how OMGAWESOME it was going to be until I saw the trailer:

    The Javascript PC emulator: pure amazing geekery. This is an x86 processor being emulated in Javascript inside a browser. And it’s running Linux. To be clear: what is essentially a full computer is running independently inside the browser. Which theoretically means you could run, well, anything inside of it.

  • Psycho!

    The other day Dave posted a story riddle with a creepy punchline: the people who answer it “correctly”—i.e. a certain way—think like psychopaths. (Sorry to spoil the surprise.) It’s meant to illustrate a particular way of thinking that psychopaths exhibit: that of other people—even family—as impersonal tools to be used for their own benefit.

    (Fortunately, I didn’t answer the riddle “correctly.”)

    Of course, I make random connections, as I am wont to do, and I remembered this older post on Boing Boing about psychopathy:

    Are psychopaths genetically adapted to survive by exploiting the rest of us?

    [CBC’s Quirks and Quarks] talks to research psychologists about the biological basis for psychopathy — and the fact that psychopaths are sexually profligate and have lots of kids. Psychopathic rapists target fertile women — not children or old women.

    Dr. Marnie Rice is a psychologist with the Mental Health Centre Penetanguishene, in Penetanguishene, Ontario. She studies criminal psychopaths who are incarcerated there. She views psychopathic behaviour as an evolved survival strategy. She says that there’s not a lot of evidence to suggest that psychopaths are mentally ill but there’s good reason to believe that their disturbing behaviour is an evolved trait. She says psychopaths have evolved to capitalize in a particular environmental niche — namely preying on the rest of society.

    Yeah, it’s kind of an odd thing to be ruminating about. But it’s a weirdly compelling idea to imagine that psychopathy is a possible result of natural selection. It makes a certain sense. I wonder what the “particular environmental niche” is referring to—large cities? Seems to me (from a purely layman’s perspective) that’s where this particular trait would take hold and be successful in an evolutionary context.

    For reference, here’s Wikipedia’s article on psychopathy.

    Anyway, cheery thoughts to take you into the weekend.

  • Oregon Lottery Space Invaders!

    Oregon Lottery Space Invaders Scrach-ItI find it rather surreal that the Oregon Lottery is now offering Space Invaders lottery tickets. Seriously. It’s part of their “Travel back” line of Scratch-Its. They look rather complicated though, and cost $3 a pop.

    Now they need to come out with other classic arcade games: Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Asteroids…

  • Links

    Just a collection of links to things I like and/or found amusing recently.

  • First a mouse, now a puppy…

    So first a mouse set a man’s house on fire, now a puppy has done the same thing here in Bend:

    A frisky puppy left in a laundry room apparently sparked a northeast Bend house fire that almost claimed his life. Investigators said Friday the dog caused an aerosol can to discharge vapors that a water heater pilot light ignited, setting the room ablaze.

    It’s like When Animals Attack, but weirder. Awesome.

    As an aside, I really like the new NewsChannel 21 site. Barney done good!

  • Mouse fire!

    Okay, this is kind of an awful story…

    No, scratch that. It’s a story that seems like it should be awful, but I just can’t take it seriously. It just makes me laugh. I can’t help it: Mouse takes down house.

    On Saturday, a Fort Sumner man’s home fell victim to a mouse fire.

    Homeowner Luciano Mares said he caught a mouse inside his residence and discarded the creature in a pile of garden refuse he was burning on his property near the home.

    “I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house,” he said.

    The. Mouse. Was. On. Fire.

    Update: Snopes debunks it. It almost happened, but the mouse was already dead.

    Update #2: According to CNN, the story may be true after all:

    Is that plausible? Fort Sumner Fire Chief Juan Chavez said Tuesday he thinks so.

    “There’s no reason for him to lie about what he told us,” Chavez said. “I don’t doubt it at all.”

    There’s hope!