Dakota Today

**No DUI resignations for spending like drunken sailors

Recently we have read about the head of the South Dakota Office of Highway Safety resigning his position because of being arrested for drunken driving. As far as I know, no allegations that he was doing his job badly, but drinking and driving as personal behavior don't mix well with preaching that good neighbors drive sober.

Today (Wed, Oct 31, 2007 issue) )in the Mitchell paper we find in a story by Bob Mercer that the Rounds administration has spent some highway funds into a big pothole. Spending exceeded revenue. Who would have thunk that with a Republican administration in Washington that the economy and travel and thus gasoline tax revenue would decline below optimistic state predictions?

Apparently jacking highway spending up about $35 million while revenue fell about $11 million does not compute well. Projections don't look good according to the story. There were changes in the SD Highway Department administration, but it is not really clear from the story why or if that had anything to do with the coming serious budget deficits.

The South Dakota Board of Regents are carrying a dog and pony show all around South Dakota to drum up support for greater spending on higher education in multiple areas. Over the years with nearly complete control of state government by Republicans in the legislative and executive departments, there appear to be large needs for major infusions of funds into higher education to improve education and maintain enrollments in the face of declining numbers of highschool graduates.

I am not sure this qualifies as any kind of a pattern or not, but it suggests that there are problems in Pierre that are not all related to drunken driving and it also appears that the administrators in Pierre can just keep "driving" and "driving wrong way", "too fast for conditions", etc but they will mostly stay right in there and we will be gouged for more fees and more taxes.

Happily according to the bureaucrats and the residents of our larger cities, the value of farm land is going up. Whoppee, let us shift an even larger burden of support of governments at all levels onto agriculture even though the price of the land may have little to do with actual income generated by the land and farmers and their families get a smaller and smaller share of government services nearly every year.

I am not sure if all of us are or are not overtaxed, but there are serious problems and inequities with taxation in South Dakota and it does not appear that Republicans have the stomach or the ability to do anything that makes any long-term sense in undoing the damage they have done to South Dakota over the years with a combination of regressive taxes and low minimum wages.

***Stay tuned...and drive sober whether or not you are a state highway safety official--- Doug Wiken

**Thanks Bernie..Book is the Real Winner

Trying to match Bernie Hunhoff's very generous note in the book he sent, "This book is EVERYTHING you ever wanted to know about scenery and people in South Dakota". In case you are wondering what this is about, check the South Dakota Magazine website for a recent contest:
New Window LINK to The Whereizzit photo contest-Oct 23, 2007

I had a lucky guess on the location for a photo at the site and won a book of SD Photos as a result. See the photo below.. Click for a larger version.

This is an unfortunately small book for a photobook, but if you want a good compact collection of photos that give a broad view of a broad state full of interesting places and people, this is a book worth having. Enclosed with the book is a combination book offer that anybody interested in South Dakota might want to buy or buy as a gift. My guess is you can find a link at the site if you follow my link above to the Whereizzit contest. It is a page-turner. You will wonder from page one until the very end what delightful image is coming next.

A few months ago, I read a story on the saga of a small Iowa publisher of textbooks. His small town business was shut down by large textbook publishers "outsourcing" the publishing to Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, etc. I am sure Bernie Hunhoff could provide a college course worth of information on magazine and book publishing and that is something we need to know more about. This book is printed in Korea. The postage to mail it was $2.74.

I can remember when the bookrate for mailing was something like 24 or 29 cents.I think congress might want to revisit why it is in our national interest to make information in books available at reasonable costs...or at least help a bit more with the shipping.

I like a book or a newspaper I can hold in my hands and bookmark or clip or add notes; but I suspect that publishing will be driven more and more to CD and DVD formats because of the lower costs and shipping charges. I guess if I were publishing a book of photos, I would try to find a way that both protected copyrights and allowed inclusion of a digital form of the book.

Well, this might be drifting into the area of looking a gift horse in the mouth and we bloggers do enough of that with the blogging media "press" we use and exploit nearly every day. So, Thanks for the book Bernie, and I hope you can keep churning out more books and magazines.

***Stay tuned for politics..I may not know enough about that, but I'm sure I know more about that than about book and magazine publishing--- Doug Wiken

**Find a rathole and plug it with computers

Recently a number of SD Bloggers have been pounding life into seemingly dead horses. Computers in schools and the things done with them is a long-running tale. SD Politics Blog, Epp's blog, and a number of others have visited the issue recently. But, the post which seems to make a lot of sense as it reminds us of some obvious things we may have forgotten is by David Newquist at his Northern Beacon blog. Take a look.
New Window LINK to Newquist writing on computers and education

Don't let the title of his post lead you to the wrong conclusion about his post...it needs a subtitle.

Meanwhile back at the farm, I have most of the grease off my hands by now. Son was home for the weekend and we ripped apart the front hub and one front axle on the F-350 Ford. Perhaps if we have the 4x4 drive working, we won't have so much snow. That seems to be the way things work. Finding parts for our old junkers is a bit of job by now too. Computers sometimes help a bit on that, but that is not quite what schools are teaching kids about computers or with computers.

**Stay tuned even if on some days nothing seems to compute--- Doug Wiken

**A day hunters pray for and hunting dogs dream about

Today is a bit chilly and the wind is blowing again, but we have had a few days of truly beautiful weather for this time of year. I tested the little Nikon L10 a few days ago and got the photo below. I used Irfanview to reduce the size. Irfanview is much easier to use than the software packed with the Nikon. I am still amazed at what gets packed into small cameras like this and also in cellphones even if I would prefer a very thin cellphone that a bit larger horizontally and vertically with larger keys, no camera, no games and longer battery life.
Click on image for a slightly larger version.

A few hunters are still driving around and airplanes are still parked at the Winner Airport. I have a few hundred acres that haven't been hunted and seem to have lots of pheasants, but pheasants apparently are not in short supply this year. One of my son's friends said that hunting up toward Aberdeen with his family and friends, that about 30 of them had their limits in less than an hour. I haven't heard any stories like that around here, but that might be the case here too. Pheasant counts are up significantly according to SD GF&P or whatever they call themselves now.

**Stay tuned even if all you look for is a few pretty good photos of pretty good days-- Doug Wiken

**Great news events of the day and other trivia

Yesterday, one of the public radio programs devoted a few minutes to a major question. No, it wasn't nuclear proliferation. It wasn't even about pheasant hunting. It never mentioned that George Bush lied and people died even though he wasn't wearing a blue semen-stained dress and never got into bed with Rudy-Judy when he was all dressed up as a woman. Nope. it wasn't about that at all. It wasn't even about global warming, but the public radio story did generate calls. And today Salon magazine jumped right into this huge controversy.

Oct. 23, 2007 | You've probably heard the news by now, since it's been splattered everywhere from the New York Times to Entertainment Weekly to the Associated Press: Albus Dumbledore, the late, great headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, was gay.

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/10/23/dumbledore/index.html

http://tinyurl.com/2xyln2

Yesterday, must have been the day the news died...or did the stock market take a dive? I expect to hear Katie on CBS Evening news discussing the depression and distemper epidemic in cats allowed to watch television and listen to the radio when they should be catching mice.

And, never mind that the SD Highway Patrol got into hot pursuit and then killed a guy as if they were feral dogs chasing a crazy cat through a muddy field. South Dakota law enforcement must have a small-type disclaimer in job employment forms "Must be willing to kill the mentally ill".

Yup, no news behind that Bush, Folks. As they used to say, "See you in the funny papers."

***Stay tuned for a pretty good photo of a a pretty good Fall day--- Doug Wiken

**Serious and not so serious humor

Now and then I get a joke in e-mail that is both funny and makes a point or two..perhaps like a stick in the eye however. First the joke which reminds me of a forum poster who used as a tagline, "Don't tell me you are a Christian, Show Me."

A man was being tailgated by a stressed out woman on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light turned yellow, just in front of him. He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection.

The tailgating woman was furious and honked her horn, screaming in
frustration as she missed her chance to get through the intersection,
dropping her cell phone and makeup.

As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up
into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to
exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she
was searched, finger printed, photographed, and placed in a holding cell.
After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the
door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer
was waiting with her personal effects.

He said, "I'm very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your
car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you,
and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the 'What Would Jesus Do'
bumper sticker, the 'Choose Life' license plate holder, the 'Follow Me to
Sunday-School' bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem
on the trunk. Naturally.....I assumed you had stolen the car."

Unfortunately I have no clue about the original source of the above or the actual
motive if any of the author. Below is a link to a cartoon that is both on target and very funny.
New Window LINK to a Glen McCoy Cartoon

Make sure you copy it, print it, and send a copy to Sen. Johnson, Rep. Herseth-Sandlin, and let Thune
know about it but it also could be drawn in multiple ways with an elephant or a headless cockroach...more on headless cockroaches in another post.

***Stay tuned for some deadly turgid serious prose....or maybe not-- Doug Wiken

**Horses catching a few rays

As the old township news sections used to say, we motored to Colome, SD and back. On the way we saw a few horses catching what might be considered the last rays of summer or the early rays of fleeting fall. Writing for blogs doesn't depend on character or word count, so you won't see phrases like "carefully negotiated a curve while motoring out of town to visit relatives in Carbuncle Township." in many blogs even if that kind of stuffing was part of the old weekly papers township news.

Anyway, below is a photo of some horses taken with a new little Nikon Coolpix L10. Seems to work and the higher resolution allows more cropping while still leaving detail. A new toy in the stable, but no horses here.
Click on image for slightly larger version.

Now to get to work on finishing a few posts with more substance and a lot less color.

*** Stay tuned for horsing around of a different color-- Doug Wiken

**They're baaaackkkkkk

We used to have a road past our place with hardly any traffic. Now we have a house about a mile east of us and a "hunting lodge" just to the west of us. This time of year rural peace and quiet isn't so peaceful and quiet.
The hunters are baacckkkk. I guess the "lodge" may be owned by one of the grain cooperatives or officers. I don't really know. I just know a lot of expensive furniture, doors, and TV toys, etc. were trucked into the steel building and local carpenters, plumbers, and electricians spent a fair amount of time on it.
Click on image for a slightly larger version.

The magic hour has arrived however and most of the vehicles have gone hauling hunters off to wherever this collection pays to hunt.

The sun is shining and the temperature is around 65 degrees at noon. No 35mph wind blowing rain and mist like we had just a couple days ago. Ground is probably saturated with moisture, but two days of actual sunshine and tolerable temperatures has left the top of the sticky gumbo mostly dry.

These are the kind of fall days that hunters might pray for and their dogs dream about.

**Stay tuned even if you don't care if you ever eat another pheasant as long as dozens of pounds of nearly edible chicken breast and chewable steak can be purchased for the price of one hunting license-- Doug Wiken

***More about SD Blogland..a test of ScribeFire

SDBlogLand



This is a test.  Looks like it works..right now anyway.

Just listening to Jon Lauck blathering about his book.  He answers questions with all the clarity and honest of Bill Janklow, master of the filibuster response technique for killing questions and discussions.  He is attempting to relate his work to the "Making of a President" book series.

Tempting to write, "I met Teddy White, and Jon Lauck, You are no Teddy White."  Not that that means much.  Working on a SD campaign years ago for Gene McCarthy, I rode in a bus with the press including White.  We were riding from the Huron Airport to a rally.  The sides of the highway were lined for what seemed like a mile with waving supporters.  Anybody who has tried to stir up a large political crowd in South Dakota might still appreciate that.  I overheard White talking to another reporter. "Sure not much turnout for McCarthy here".  He never bothered to get out of the bus.  Whatever, he was at least personable.  Some of the press along for that ride and a later plane ride into the Sioux Falls Coliseum can only be described as arrogant pricks.  No better or alternative description would be appropriate.

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**Stay tuned even if you never, ever play with addin toys for Firefox or have never, ever ridden in a bus with a load of reporters.--- Doug Wiken

**Our Chickens****, Mickey Mouse, ripoff US Post Office.

Warning. This is a rant. I had two duplicate keys made exactly the same. I had them made to send one to our daughter and one to our son, so they could get into a house without crawling through a window if we did not happen to be around when they arrived.

The keys were on one of those thin wire key rings about the diameter of a penny. I left it on one key and took the other key off the ring. With a drymark and a paper punch, I made two small tags out of the white plastic from a milk jug. One key was attached to the plastic tag with the ring from the store. The other was attached to a tag with a plastic wire tie for plastic bags. Then I folded a paper towel around them so they would not punch through the envelope.

One mailed as a regular envelope for 41 cents. The other would not pass through a 1/4 inch slot in a piece of cardboard without being pulled through and thus had to be mailed as a package for $1.13 cents.

So, if you mail anything and want it to go in an envelope for the regular rate, make sure it is less that 1/4 inch thick anyplace in the envelope. I suspect the best way to mail stuff that is small like a key is to tape it completely to a sheet of paper with something like duct tape.

Now, I don't know if this is a new way the post office has conjured up to screw a few more pennies out of the unsuspecting or another camouflaged anti-terrorist system under devious cover. Whatever it is a chickenshit, Mickey Mouse, unseemly ripoff.

Our senators and congressmen are sleeping someplace and with their generous mailing privileges are blissfully unaware of the systematic screwing of the general population that isn't rich enough to have a lobby firm beating on doors in Washington.

**Stay tuned even if you never use the US Post Office to mail anything anymore. What we need are digital designs that can be emailed and reconstructed into devices on the receiving end.. Incidentally, most of the time neither rain nor sleet nor snow will stop your e-mail--- Doug Wiken