Yup, I live in a small town

Two freight trains crossing in Morris, Minnesota

The lead front page headline in last week’s issue of our (weekly) local newspaper?

Stalled train tangles traffic on Thursday

Yup. That’s what passes for news in our happy little world. The train had brake problems and ended up parked for two hours, initially blocking all 5 crossings in town; at some point they split the train and opened up the southernmost crossing rejoining the sundered halves of town. This was the day (10 Oct) that I brought WeatherGrrrl home from the hospital after her knee replacement surgery, and as part of borrowing a friend’s van to collect WeatherGrrrl in (thanks KK!), I ended up crossing those tracks three times while all this was going on. Thus I can attest that the Morris Police peeps were out directing traffic and being genuinely useful as I was moving back and forth, so big thanks to them for helping manage what passes for a big deal out here in the rural wilderness.

My favorite line from the article (emphasis mine):

For the next two hours, officers from the MPD helped keep traffic moving along Highway 28 and Pacific Avenue, two busy thoroughfares during the morning commute.

Well, I guess Highway 28 does have the only two traffic lights in town. That makes it a busy thoroughfare, right? Right???

Now I’m going to go back to watching construction vehicles push dirt around as part of the road construction in our neighborhood.

Or maybe I’ll check on the squirrels collecting food for the winter. They’ve been enjoying gathering up half-eaten apples from our trees, and tucking them in all sorts of interesting places.

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Never underestimate the stupidity of stupid people

While I’ve been utterly swamped with Jess’s visit (here and there), preparing for EuroGP and the book release, and various random deadlines, life has (strangely enough) continued around me.

Included in this mêlée of activity is the crazy news that PeeZed got expelled from Expelled. This is (by numerous accounts) a fairly dreadful film about how hard done by those poor ID folks are, and how mean and nasty those icky evolutionists are. Waa. Both PeeZed and Richard Dawkins were interviewed for the film under false pretenses, and get non-trivial screen time. There was a free pre-screening of the film in the Cities last night, which conveniently (and I think accidentally?) coincided with a major atheist meeting in the Cities. So PeeZed and various of his family and friends including Dawkins(!) all trouped off to check it out.

The wonderful kicker is that one of the producers

  • Recognized PeeZed in line,
  • Had PeeZed expelled,
  • Failed to recognize Dawkins (or any others in his group)

Saw Dawkins got to see the movie, but Paul had to hang out in the mall waiting for them to get out! The Mall of America (where all this happened) is big, but I’m not sure it’s big enough to hold that much irony.

There’s loads o’ blogging on the subject; PeeZed is collecting and sharing links (here, there, and elsewhere, plus his post from the Apple Store during the film). Quite happily, it’s also being reported for the fiasco that it is in the mainstream press (e.g., Pioneer Press and the NY Times).

Thanks to Dan Flies for sending me an e-mail about all this. I really had missed it all, so having the direct pointer was a Good Thing.

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