Four-way stops must be outlawed in Minnesota

They just don’t work. Maybe you’ve heard of “Minnesota nice”, this strange passive-aggressive attitude around here that compels everyone to compete at being the most polite and deferential…and it completely defeats the function of the 4-way stop at an intersection. The rule is simple—whoever first comes to a complete stop gets to be the first to proceed through the intersection—but real Minnesotans can’t grasp it. It’s nice to let someone go through first, so you’ll sometimes run into these situations where two cars are parked at the crossroads, with each driver waving for the other to go ahead, and they just sit there. Then they’ll both edge forward, stop abruptly as they notice the other fellow trying to advance, and the gesticulating commences again.

I just made a trip to the grocery store when I came upon two cars stopped, one to the left and the other to the right, their drivers flapping their arms madly and not going anywhere. My arrival seems to have made the situation worse, because they added me to their pattern of waving. Come on, I’m last at the intersection, I’m supposed to be last to proceed! It’s easy!

Anyway, I’m from Washington. I gave them 15 or 20 seconds, then said screw it, and went ahead.

Minneapolis is getting a new planetarium!

I’m so used to seeing nothing but bad news, it’s surprising to see a community actually making a substantial investment in its educational infrastructure. We’re adding a $40+ million planetarium to the downtown library. That’s terrific!

It also adds a useful perspective. Remember how appalled we all were (and are) that Answers in Genesis could raise $27 million for a creationist museum? Well, that is a lot of money, and it’s depressing that slack-jawed yokels would sink that much cash into an edifice to ignorance, but on the grand scale of what real educational institutions have to spend to build and maintain genuine museums and planetariums and similar facilities for public edification, it’s a cheap outfit.

Cosmic Variance brings up John McCain’s opinion of planetariums. He’s ag’in ’em. Of course, with McCain and Palin, one has to wonder if they even know what they are.

What kind of music do Minnesotans like?

Let’s see…it must have a lot of accordions in it, or cowboys singing drunken love songs to their trucks, right? Just to blow your minds, my colleague with esoteric musical taste, Nic McPhee, is getting interviewed tonight, and he’ll be playing some of his favorite songs on the radio. This is our local university radio station, which has a limited license and can’t play anything that has cracked the top 40 in the last 10 or 20 years, but I don’t think Nic’s taste will conflict at all with the station rules.

So tune in to KUMM, 89.7FM, at 6:00pm Central and have those rural Minnesotan stereotypes broken. If you live farther away than Starbuck, Minnesota, you can also listen to the internet stream.

Apparently, we hate Wisconsin even worse than the Dakotas

One of the quirks of this small town is the music I sometimes hear in the local grocery store. We don’t get the usual boring muzak that was screened by some beancounter to maximize inoffensiveness — I was quite charmed the first time I went shopping there, and instead of boring old 1001 Strings soft-soaping pop, I actually heard them playing Patti Smith belting out “Gloria”. Now it usually isn’t so transcendently magnificent — in fact, it’s still usually the kind of thing you might hear on a soft-rock or easy-listening or country station — but at least now and then you get to hear something with character.

Which isn’t always good.

So this afternoon I zipped over to pick up some fresh tomatoes and provolone for dinner, step in the door, and hear this horrible adenoidal voice with a Minnesota accent singing this:

Beating on the cheeseHEADS!
Beating on the cheeseHEADS!
We are all rejoicing
Beating on the cheeseHEADS!

Not just once, not twice, but over and over again, for the entire duration of my visit (which was short: there may be something to this idea that background music can influence market behavior.) It was incredibly annoying, but everyone else in the store was going about their business in a perfectly normal fashion. Weird.

I guess there is some football game tonight that has the region riled up. There’s nothing quite like bizarre, understated Minnesota patriotism to highlight some of the strangeness of local culture.

We’re waiting on you guys…

I’m down at this funky coffeehouse in Fargo, the Red Raven, watching Roy Zimmerman set up. It’s not too late, the show starts in a half hour, so you Dakotans better come on over! It’s a nice cozy little venue, and a great place for a performance.

Definitely a great performance — Roy is great about making you laugh over situations that ought to make you cry. I heard a few new songs, including one about Sarah Palin that must have been written in just the past few days. Here’s my obligatory fanboy picture:

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If you missed him tonight, there are more chances. He’s about halfway through his 48 state tour, and he’s going to be spending the next few days in Minneapolis/St Paul. He’s not actually participating in the Republican National Convention (good thing, too: I think somebody would shoot him in the face), but is doing shows at various venues around the area, so check his website to see the details of his schedule.

This is important: he isn’t booked yet for every single day! If you know of an organization that could use a little relief from the oppressive atmosphere of the RNC this week, bring him in and give him the opportunity to spread a little liberal humor.

Greg & PZ’s Excellent Party

Scienceblogs.com is about to hit one of those arbitrary round-number milestones: sometime soon, someone will make the one millionth comment. Our generous Seed overlords wish to mark this event with celebrations all over the world, and are planning to bestow upon us small sums of money for the purpose of purchasing refreshments at gatherings of bloggers and readers near the places where our physical forms abide.

In other words, we get to have a party and Seed will pay for the beer.

So Greg Laden and I are going to organize a joint party — if I tried to have one in Morris, the contrast with my readership would make me look sad — so we’re going to get together somewhere in the Twin Cities area some evening.

The best time for me will be the evening of Thursday, 18 September, because that’s when I’ll be driving through on my way to Madison anyway. Now we’re looking for a nice venue: something with seating for a throng, that’s not too noisy (we’ll provide the noise, instead of a football game on the big screen or a band on the stage), and with good food and beer, somewhere near the Twin Cities, and where some of you readers might actually show up. Make suggestions here and at Greg’s place and we’ll pull it together.

Wisdom from rural Minnesota

Here is an important suggestion, if ever you should find yourself living in rural Minnesota.

Always roll up your car windows at night.

Wait, you say — that seems unnecessary. This is a trusting part of the world, where petty crime is rare, and people leave houses and cars unlocked all the time. Why not leave the windows down so that the interior is cooled by soft breezes in the summer months?

There are two reasons. Remember them.

  1. You never know when a rainstorm might flare up, soaking your car seats. This is a fairly minor concern, however.

  2. Open cars are giant insect traps. You have not experienced Minnesota until you’ve entered your car to discover it is full of enraged, starving, confused, and frantic mosquitos. This is particularly disastrous if it has rained and your cupholders are pools of water, because now they are also horny and want a blood meal so they can lay eggs in your car interior.

That is all.

The annoyance of the local weather

You may have heard that the midwest, my little corner of the universe, has been hit hard by storms. My specific little area has avoided the worst, and we’ve been watching the major storms fly by on the television, just clipping us as they rip past, but we have been inundated — on Wednesday, in particular, it was one of those days where you huddle inside while the thunder rattles the windows and the water gushes out of the sky. There is a lot of construction work on the road in front of my house, and they had to stop while the roadbed turned into a sea of mud.

So where we are, it’s uncomfortable but nothing more, which means that our greatest affliction right now is the epidemic of dumbness on the news.

“We’re just kind of at God’s mercy right now, so hopefully people that never prayed before this, it might be a good time to start,” Linn County Sheriff Don Zeller said. “We’re going to need a lot of prayers and people are going to need a lot of patience and understanding.”

I guess god really hated those people who died or had serious property damage then, huh, Dumbass Don?

I really can’t stand public officials who think they are being helpful by telling people to waste their time.

Hey, how about this one?

“I believe that this is God’s way of doing things, and I’ve got insurance, so I’m not worried about it,” said Tim Grimm, who was forced to leave his home in the city’s Czech Village area.

And they call atheists unfeeling, arrogant, and amoral…