If this is your clinic, the folks at Rockefeller Center may want a word with you

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I have a slight fascination with logos and typography…enough so that this blog has a Logos, Signs, Typos category. It’s no surprise that, having worked for a network of NBC affiliates for nearly a decade and a half, I have been experiencing a sort of deja vu whenever I encounter one of these clinic advertisements around town. Something about it just repeatedly caught my eye. I pondered it briefly the other day, and realized why. I delved back into my toolkit of assorted NBC logos and made a little overlay…

Spooky resemblance. It’s not 100% identical, but certainly close. I suppose it doesn’t help that the “rainbow sun” (as NBC in-house designers call it) bears a geometric relationship to the arch next to the Mid Dakota logo. Maybe the lady on this billboard has realized the resemblance!

Coincidence? Probably. Sinister conspiracy? Doubtful. I just find it interesting how simple shapes and typography can give us such strong, persistent visual cues. Besides, at least it’s not another doggone leaf.

BOMBSHELL: NCAA refuses to lift ban on UND unless North Dakota changes its state name

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(BISMARCK) Emboldened by their recent victory over the North Dakota legislature and the citizens it represents, the NCAA has delivered another bombshell demand: the state will be barred from hosting post-season events and denied entry into its desired Big Sky Conference unless the state changes its name. That’s right: not the team mascot and logo…the actual name of the state of North Dakota.

“The term ‘Dakota’ is simply another word for ‘Sioux’,” said NCAA executive vice president Bernard Franklin. “We at the NCAA find this state name ”hostile and abusive” and have a strict policy against states which use Native American names. We cannot change that policy. Now that the legislature has seen the light and capitulated in our campaign against the nickname, it’s time to pursue this issue to its logical fruition.”

Worries that visiting sports teams entering the state of North Dakota may be offended when confronted with road signs, license plates, and certain provocative signage bearing the name “North Dakota” at the entry to the University of North Dakota’s campus, representatives of the Big Sky Conference are balking at the idea of allowing UND membership to their organization as well.

“What happens if a team comes to North Dakota and is blindsided by views of Highway Patrol cars, state highway signs, and other ”hostile and abusive” use of native American imagery, only to realize that the very name of the state they’ve entered is based on the use of another word for “Sioux?” lamented Big Sky Commissioner Doug Fullerton. “The state itself is named after the same bigoted terminology which ignited this issue due to its divisive nature. We simply must reconsider their membership.”

North Dakota’s State Board of Higher Education and its president Grant Shaft emphatically support the proposal. “Our tenured academics have been behind this Politically Correct crusade from Day One,” he explains. “Besides, it helps draw people’s attention away from our institutions getting caught inflating enrollment numbers, presidents of numerous state institutions being forced to resign, NDSU’s secret ownership of a private aircraft used in our lobbying efforts, and our demands for more funding and tuition increases even as our appropriations continue to skyrocket. This is good for the state’s higher education cartel on so many levels.”

While efforts to support the name “North Dakota” have stalled on the politically turbulent Standing Rock Reservation, more than two thirds of Spirit Lake tribe’s membership have come out and voted in favor of keeping the state name. A lawsuit to save the name “North Dakota” and prevent millions of globes and maps from becoming obsolete, while standing up for native pride, is in the works. Oddly, open records requests by the tribes have been largely ignored or stalled until it’s too late to draft testimony to the upcoming legislative special session. Frank Black Cloud is not surprised. “ They are simply repeating the same pattern of ignoring us when it comes to our name and likeness; a pattern which has been evident throughout the entire issue,” he said in a public meeting.

While states with enough money to push back are being largely ignored, as they were in the Fighting Sioux Logo instance, smaller states with names such as South Dakota are watching with keen interest. Even though the vast majority of North Dakotans take great pride in the name of their state, the legislature is already working to repeal legislation declaring the state’s name as “North Dakota.” Democrat David O’Connel lamented, “We gave it our best to stand up to and overcome the intimidation and abuse of power of the NCAA. But it is now time to repeal the law. It is no longer about preserving heritage, or defending ND culture. It is about safeguarding a strong future for our state along with its students and athletics.”

(While obviously a parody, it makes one wonder…how far will this crusade against North Dakota go? Some of the quotes in this article are REAL – can you discern them from the parodies?

Cellphone photo stream part 5

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Sometimes even I don’t have a camera handy, and all I can do is make a quick grab with my cell phone. I don’t have an iPhone (yet) so the quality isn’t what I’m used to, but sometimes simply getting the shot at all is the best you can hope for. Here are some tidbits from a while back:

At the state EMS banquet last spring, a table of honor was set for those first responders who lost their lives – some in the act of protecting or assisting others.

When you’re a little boy, watching cars go under the skyway can be entertaining for a long, long time. Especially if you count the yellow ones.

A trip to the capitol over lunch brought a surprise discovery – a Lotus! I’ve driven one of these many times…on my Xbox.

Shootin’ the Eric Sevareid Symposium at the Belle Mehus. I made the DVD set of the keynote and other festivities from the week. Everyone apparently tried to ignore the fact that participant Dan Rather used forged documents to try to affect the outcome of a presidential election when he was CBS News’ anchor.

The Great Hall of the capitol. Soon there will be an enormous Christmas tree here.

Lowes was ready with plenty of Shop Vacs after the flood.

The Playstation 3 truck was in town, its driver apparently staying at the Kelly Inn.

It’s not every day you see a Blackhawk helicopter buzzing the lawn of the capitol mall. It’s even rarer to be standing beneath it!

Two down, one to go.

My little boys are absorbing their Daddy’s love of photography. Their toy cameras are starting to bore them; they more frequently ask to use one of my “big cameras.”

Yeah…about that “ninety-nine percent” thing

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UPDATE: Click on this link to see who is supporting this “movement.”

This afternoon on my way home from work I spotted three hapless kids holding anti-capitalist signs at the top of 7th Street. While the urge might be to try to hurl some common sense their way while waiting for the red light to change, these useful idiots are not worth the time or effort. They’re there because it fills an emotional need, not because the content of those signs bears any resemblance to reality.

I had a fun idea: make a parody of the handwritten sign meme recently made popular by the “Occupy” protests (the term “occupy” itself is funny, because it’s another retread term from the failed “revolutions” of the 1960’s).

I looked at the notes posted in photos by many of these protestors: many hiding their faces, most scrawling notes about tens of thousands of college loan debt for meaningless majors and worthless liberal arts degrees, all wanting someone ELSE to do something about it. That is so contrary to how North Dakotans tend to view themselves and the standard to which we hold ourselves that I felt moved to make a little note of my own.

Here’s a larger version if the one above is hard to read on your screen. I simply wanted to highlight that I believe the exact opposite of what those greedy protesters are all “occupying” for. I call them greedy because in my mind what they’re doing, demanding that someone else give them their property, is far more greedy than some rich guy wanting to keep what he’s earned.

A friend of mine walked around one of the Occupy Bismarck protests and asked people about their signs and what they meant. Most couldn’t answer the questions, and used “I didn’t make this sign” as an excuse. That makes perfect sense, even if the leftist cliches on their signs do not. Clearly these people aren’t the real 99% of anything except maybe the Democrat Party.

It could be a while before your next Fort Lincoln Trolley ride

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Hiking north of Fort Lincoln reveals trouble for the Fort Lincoln Trolley, one of my favorite local attractions. Most people haven’t seen even a small fraction of the devastation caused by the Flood of 2011 south of Mandan, and this is just one of many tragic stories.

This particular section has left a long stretch of rail, along with whatever ties were strong enough to remain attached, literally hanging in open air.

While the rails have not broken, they’ve certainly bent and are in serious need of rescue. The dark spot to the right of the tracks in the upper right portion of this photo is an enormous crack in the earth.

This isn’t the first time that the trolley folks have had to deal with erosion of the hills upon which their track resides; however, I don’t know whether previous damage was anywhere near as serious as this. Not only has a lot of the hill let go, but there are still major cracks in parts of the hill that remain. It looks as though plenty more dirt is waiting for an opportune moment to plunge toward the river as well.

As you can see, a large section of the hill simply separated and tumbled toward the river below as the hill was eroded from its base by the overflowing river. I used my monopod as a makeshift jib to suspend my camera in the air over the tracks for this treacherous shot.

I don’t know what it’ll take to get these tracks back to operational status; it looks like a trellis system might be required, because I don’t think it’s feasible to try to rebuild and reinforce this section of the hill. Hopefully something can be done for next season, because this trolley ride is one of the more fun ways to spend a summer afternoon! I shot some video of my last ride…I’ll have to put a little something together and post it here.

I’m sure glad the rumormongers didn’t get a hold of this

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The last twelve months haven’t been exactly stellar for the Army Corps of Engineers. They’ve been far worse for thousands of people who’ve had to deal with the results of their pooch-screw policies in regard to management of the Missouri River System. Their lack of credibility with people in the Dakotas was validated when the Argus Leader newspaper uncovered emails with bombshells such as Todd Lundquist’s quote saying, “I’m headed home. I no longer look people in the eye and tell them the forecast is 85,000 cfs from Garrison.” Later releases would reach nearly double that rate. While there was a lot of rumbling and grumbling going on, I stumbled upon a another sort of rumble:

I was surprised to find this event on the USGS earthquake watch website, an 3.5 magnitude quake west of Fort Peck which hit on July 1st. This was a day or so before an oil pipeline burst beneath the Yellowstone River far away near Billings, an event which grabbed all the headlines for a few days. While I don’t think this quake was directly related to the spill, I remember seeing some other quakes much closer to the pipeline leak at the time. What was interesting was that nobody spotted the 3.5 shaker and either tried to connect it to the pipeline failure or use it to sensationalize the possibility of a failure at Fort Peck.


Remember, this was about a month after environmental activist Bernard Shanks published a guest commentary on the St. Louis Today website outlining his fear of a “domino effect” on the Missouri River System. His nightmare scenario began with the failure of the Fort Peck Dam. While his article was very timely, it also coincided with one other important event: his publishing a book on the theory. I doubt that was a coincidence, but the whole thing gained a lot of traction in the Dakotas as we were already learning not to trust the Corps. Mr. Shanks appeared on local radio and links to his article were flying around Facebook rather furiously.

Then, of course, you have to wonder about this: an emergency bid being put out for the material which reinforces the Fort Peck Dam, the very one Mr. Shanks claims is the weak link and which was at 111% of capacity.

Naturally the last thing I wanted to do was contribute to any hype, so I just sat on my little discovery. I don’t deal in sensationalism and reliable information was already hard to come by in weary communities already made nervous by the fluidity of facts. Therefore I resolved to wait until the flood waters had receded and the threat of Mr. Shanks’ domino effect abated with them. I’ve watched as the river levels have fallen past the 9.79 feet of January 1st, 2011 and settled in the six-and-a-half foot range. While I think the event is certainly noteworthy, I certainly don’t think it was worth hysteria.

Here are a couple of links to the event for the curious. Its ID is event 11948206 for those of you who want to dart straight to Google for your own research.

USGS Earthquake event website entry

USGS Shakemap web page for #11948206

Now let’s hope that the management of the Missour River System doesn’t put us in the same precarious position next year. In the unfortunate event that we find ourselves in a flood fight again, I hope the Corps will be more forthcoming and that people will resist the urge to play loose & fast with information. Events like this are far harder to endure when sensationalism runs amok as well.

Hiking at “oh dark hundred” pays off

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I alluded earlier to a hike I took before sunrise with my friend Matt in order to get some nice sunrise photos. The skies were clear when we departed, but by the time we’d hiked up the hill to the blockhouses of Fort Lincoln there was very little clear sky available. Nevertheless, the sun came through for us as it maximized the sliver of unobstructed sky to the east, beaming color through in dramatic fashion.

After grabbing shots from several different angles, I decided to do an abbreviated time lapse. Since I had other things going on, I was not prepared to get the entire sunrise, but I could see that the sun was going to emerge through another slender gap in the clouds. I hastily set up for it and, although it’s short, I thought it looked pretty decent when looped a couple of times:

Between the photos and this short little time lapse, not to mention great company, rolling out of bed at 5:30 in the morning was well worth it. I think I’ll sleep in tomorrow, though…it’s been a long week!

Well, I never noticed that before

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Of all the time I’ve spent in various parts of the World War Memorial Building, I don’t recall ever taking notice of this interesting feature tucked up in near the ceiling over the edge of the basketball court. I don’t know if there were seats on both the north and south ends of the gymnasium, but they’re only on the north side now. I was sitting with one of my little boys having some lunch when I noticed this little box up in the rafters. The “KFYR” sign in the windows gives its purpose away.

The narrow wooden walkway to this booth remains intact, but whatever stairway or ladder provided access to the walkway is long gone. I imagine it’s been a long time since anyone ever called a game from this press box, but it’s probably more hassle than it’s worth to try to dismantle it and take it down. As a result it remains up above the gymnasium, just in case someone ever needs to get a birds-eye view of the haps down on the basketball floor.

Wayne Sanstead’s DPI folks training to coerce your children’s view of sexuality

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Yes, that’s right: they’re at it again. The last time Wayne Sanstead’s staff at DPI tried to get away with this, parents and others spoke out and got it cancelled. It was only six months ago, but they’re back.

According to the NDEA website, DPI is going to be presenting at an NDEA “Own the Change” conference this week (where have we heard that word “Change” so often before?) at Century High School. Its keynote speaker, Jo Anderson Jr., “has a background in community organizing” and spent time in Illinois (as did our president) “working particularly on efforts of the union” before landing a cushy gig as an Advisor to the Secretary of Education.

Well…Hope™ and Change™ come to North Dakota public schools! That’s no surprise given the NDEA’s involvement; however, DPI’s is even more perverse:

Sandy Tibke, one of Sanstead’s own staff, is going to be training teachers on normalizing “LGBTQ” behavior among our children. By the way, notice they’ve added the “Q” for “questioning”. That means if your child gets confused about sexuality issues, guess who’s ready to do the advocating counseling? Not you, I’d bet. Notice, by the way, how they keep adding letters to the acronym as they attempt to normalize additional deviant sexual behaviors. How long until they add a second B for Bestiality, or who knows what else? Maybe Ms. Tibke has the answer.

We’d like to think that North Dakota is resistant of all this Hope™ and Change™ – but Wayne Sanstead’s DPI is persistent in trying to fly it under our collective radar. Here’s my post from the last time they tried to sneak this garbage into our schools. The groups they affiliate themselves with are the same cadre of twisted freaks who got busted teaching “fisting” and “rimming” to school children in Massachusetts in 2009.

How do you suppose you “start creating a safe school environment” for deviant sexual behavior? Easy: tell the other kids that their parents are hateful bigots, their religion and faith are wrong, and that the perverts are the normal ones. Undermine parental authority and the free exercise of faith and religion guaranteed by the First Amendment, and squelch any opposition to the advance of the queer agenda in our school system. Intimidate the kids and the parents with threats of “discrimination” and “gender bias” and you’re free to do whatever you want!

The only ones dealing with children’s sexuality should be their parents – but that’s apparently not the way DPI sees it. I hope this comes out in future elections, by the way. Homosexual advocates tell us to “stay out of our bedrooms” but they’re hell-bent on getting into our childrens’ classrooms!

THANK YOU to Janne Myrdal of Concerned Women for America for posting this on the Say Anything Blog. As she points out, you can call the DPI at 701-328-2260 or e-mail wsanstead@nd.gov to urge them to abort this “training” and keep the homosexual agenda out of North Dakota’s public education system.

Oh yes…here’s where I back it up. Here are the PDFs from the NDEA:

Program for the “Own the Change” conference (PDF)

NDEA website describing the event (PDF)

Hot Air has a disturbing look at where this sort of thing is headed: “Do safe schools require an iron fisting?”

Colorful confluence

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I celebrated the weekend by hiking up to the blockhouses at Fort Lincoln with a friend and our cameras. We took off at 6am and got there just before the sunrise, which was a case of perfect timing. While the sky was perfectly clear upon departure, clouds filled most of the sky by the time of our arrival at the top of the hill.

As the color began to fill the sky, we began exploring all the angles to get the best view of the remaining sliver of clear sky as well as those photogenic old forts. As the different elements of sunlight, color, photography, and friendship began to converge, we got some really cool shots from a variety of locations. Then, as quickly as it came, the dramatic effects of the sunrise left behind the advancing clouds and it was time to hike back to the truck and head home.