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December 17, 2009 Page 3
Hello,
I'm back! And you didn't even
know I was gone! That hurts. That
really hurts.
A nice time to leave. Way below
zero with cows and calves to feed.
Lucky I bought Shirley some nice
work mittens before I left! It was
her birthday and all. And I am a
thoughtful guy.
Well, I have to tell you about my
trip. I think I'm getting dumber. If
that is possible. I was hauling some
pipe to west Texas. Which is a long
way south of here. Across the cor-
ner of South Dakota. Across scenic
Wyoming. Through Colorado and
New Mexico, and into west Texas
near El Paso.
111 scenic Wyoming I got caught
in the high winds north of
Chugwater. Zero visibility and poor
roads, Took low out of the transmis-
sion on my pickup.
In Colorado, I took a wrong turn
'while looking for a place to stay and
think I went Over Pikes Peak.
In New Mexico I crept over
Raton pass in/'our low at ten miles
per hour. Which seems awfully
slow when you still have six hun-
dred miles to go.
Hat Tips
By Dean Meyer
In Colorado, I
took a wrong turn
while looking for a
place to stay and
think I went over
Pikes Peak.
see a sign. Las Vegas! 90 minutes
away!
Well, since the National Finals
Rodeo was on, I got excited. I called
Shirley and told her I might spend a
day in Vegas if they didn't need this
pipe right away. Being an under-
standing wife, who was a littl~
chilly from feeding cows, that
announcement was greeted with
silence. Which I took to mean,
"Have fun !"
As I neared Las Vegas, I could
see mountains off to the west. I even
recognized some of them from a
golf trip to Las Vegas last year. It
was beautiful. I came over a little
dered, how it could have happened
so fast. I couldn't even see The
Strip. Which is visible from outer
space. Or so I've been told. There
were only two exits off" the
Interstate.
Well, I'd been hearing about the
economy and all. And how housing
was really depressed in Vegas. But
man, this was beyond anything I
had imagined. I felt sorry for these
people. Las Vegas had been set back
a hundred years! Thinking of all the
unemployed dancing girls and
cocktail waitresses l felt 1 had to do
something.
So I pulled in for fuel. With tears
in my eyes. As I was fueling up, a
young couple pulled up at the pump
next to mine.
I wiped the tears from my eyes
and asked how to get to the Strip.
The looked confused. Poor
things I thought. I imagine they are
out of work. And probably have lit-
tle kids at home,
"What Strip'?"
They were completely lost. I felt
sony for them.
Then. when I got into the
deserts of New Mexico (the one
Marty Robbins sings about) I final-
ly could relax. So here I am driving
along, whistling El Paso, when I
rise in the desert road and there it
was ! Las Vegas !
Boy, had they toned it down a lot
since I was there last spring. The
bright lights were turned off. I won-
N
. D. Matters
By Lloyd Omdahl
I
- ~J5
-
YOU WILL VALUI VOU PRNACY/ YOU biD. WHeN YOU
WROI£ ABOUT IT TRIGLgITER "flOAT I POUND DFoOIN
"'You know", 1 gently chided. U
"Caesars Palace, The Mirage. North D,,ot I
Wynn's."
Even though George Nelson is a
very deserving $1.1 million winner,
the North Dakota Lottery is still a
scaT. Consequently, I have not been,
joining the weekly pilgrimages to
Wally's Supermarket in Graflon to
buy lucky lottery tickets although I
suspect that scores of superstitious
gamblers have been making the trip
since the state's biggest winners
have been hauling their winnings
home from tickets sold at Wally's.
Webster defines a scaT as "a
fraudulent scheme." There is no
greater scaT in the gambling world
than state lotteries, the North
Dakota Lottery included. Just look
at the figures. The Lottery sells
around $25 million worth of tickets
annually, distributed as follows:
ry still
The Lottery web-
site boasts that this
scam is "our most
recent government-
sponsored busi-
ness enterprise."
"Oh," the poor guy says, "You
mean Las Vegas, Nevada. Not New
Mexico!"
Damn.
Later, Dean
$5.5 million for operating expenses; be true. The Lottery is constantly
$5.5 million to the state general advertising chances that are too
fund; $200,000 to fight gambling
addiction, and $12 million for
,~,prizes.
Now that $12 million in prizes
.. ;represents around 45 per cent of
Lottery receipts. That's got to be
some form of fraud. Robbing banks
would be more honest when we
remember that the casinos on the
Native-American reservations pay
out 80 to 90 per cent.
Knowing Attorney General
Wayne Stenehjem to be an upstand-
ing, responsible person, I was sur-
prised that he appeared in Grafton to
present the symbolic check to the
million dollar winner. After all, he
rnns a consumer fraud division in
his office and warns us weekly
about some scat that is too good to
good to be true.
'Of course, Wayne didn't cook up
this enterprise. The voters of North
Dakota sanctioned this enterprise in
two separate elections and the legis-
lature foisted administration on the
O"
attorney =eneral s office. The num-
ber of co-conspirators involved in
this seam is incredible.
Consequently, he has the option of
absolving himself with the old
hand-washing maneuver.
The Lottery website boasts that
this scat is "our most recent gov-
ernment-sponsored business enter-
prise." Audits indicate that it is "also
scaT
the fastest-growing enterprise,
reportin~ sales of only $6 million in
2004 and jumping to around $25
million today. The scam is, getting
b]gger..
Allegedly, it tries to be a good
scare, with no intention of being lar-
cenous. The website claims that the
North Dakota Lottery pledges to be
"'responsible" and urges folks not to
spend more than they can afford.
"Remember! It's just a game. If
gambling is no longer fun, please
contact the Mental Health
Association," the site advises.
But the fun can now be extended.
The Lottery is promoting the'use of
credit cards for buying lottery tick-
ets. That is a new definition of
"responsible". Credit card debt has
become the scourge of America and
North Dakota state govermnent is
now promoting it. Credit cards are
an open invitation to addicts to
spend more than they can afford.
Most people who buy lottery
tickets know that the odds of win-
ning are from nil to poor. (For over
99 per cent, the odds are more "nil"
than "'poor".) They don't mind
spending a few dollars on a bad bet.
But the smart gamblers - if gam-
bling can be smart - will head for
the reservations where Native-
Americans will give them a better
deal than they can get from North
Dakota's newest government-spon-
sored enterprise.
I wasn't quite sure I had heard
correctly. My friend, a fellow geol-
ogist, and I were standing in the
swimming lanes of a lap pool where
we had stopped to give each other
greetings of the season.
"My hearing in this ear is a
whole lot better," he had said.
Or so I thought.
"The surgery replaced the tiny,
tiny third bone - the innermost
bone - of the ear," he went on. "It
had become ossified, sort of
cemented to the rest of my head
over the years, so it couldn't vibrate
like it should."
From high school biology I
vaguely remembered three tiny
bones in a little chain in the ear,
bones that have the task of amplify-
ing sound waves as they enter the
ear. Sound waves in air don't pack
nearly the "oomph" as pressure-
waves in water, so if you want to
hear in air (and most of us do), you
need little mechanical anaplifliers -
which is what the three ear-bones
are. The third and final tiny bone
gives the last boost of amplitication
and also separates the air we live in
from the water that fills and con-
veys sounds within the inner ear.
It's in that fluid that tiny, tiny
hairs respond to pressure-waves
and translate them into electrical
signals that flow to our brains.
Ttlat's the whole goal of an ear,
from my point of view as a physical
scientist, to translate sound waves
into electrical signals.
But the system doesn't work if
that last, and most tiny of all, bone
cannot flex and move.
"The implanted piston goes in
and out in place oF that last bone.
And it works!" my friend said with
evident pleasure. "I can hear sopra-
nos again."
Now, in truth, my own hearing
standing in the swimming pool was
problematic because I had mis-
placed my good earplugs that day.
My outer ears - the part you can
reach with a Q-tip although you are
not supposed to do so - had water
Roc Doe
By Dr. E. Kirsten Peters
Other views
By Ellen Feuerhelm
That's the whole
goal of an ear, from
my point of view as
a physical scien-
tist, to translate
sound waves into
electrical signals.
in them and shaking my head was-
n't doing much to get the water out.
All of that got me thinking about
air and fluid in different parts of my
ear. But only when I talked to my
friend Ken Kardong, biology pro-
fessor here at Washington State
University, did I start to understand
that my almost random questions
about the matter were unearthing a
bit of the long history of life on
Earth.
Ears are nothing new. Many fish
have pretty complicated ears,
including fluid-filled inner ears.
Fish go back to the Paleozoic Era,
the oldest era in the history of life
that has complex vertebrate fossils
(proper animals with backbones).
There was one part of the Paleozoic
in which there were many, many
fish species in the seas - as we
know from the fossil record - but
still no complex species at all on
land. That's how early and simple
was what we geologists mean by
"the early Paleozoic."
When land-loving vertebrates
first show uP in the fossil record
they are amphibians - animals that
move from the water to land and
back. Reptiles follow amphibians
near the end of the Paleozoic, again
a fact we know from the fossil
record.
It's no surprise that the inner
ears of fish would be filled with
fluid. And since the inner ear is sep-
arated from the other parts of the
ear by a bone and seal, you can see
how the inner ears of amphibians
and then reptiles would likely
remain fluid-filled while the outer
parts of the ears started to become
air-filled. ~.,~
When us fully-land-loving mam-
mals come on the scene in the
Mesozoic Era - the era dominated
by the dinosaurs - we naturally
enough have air-fille0 outer ears
and fluid-filled inner ears. We still
do. That's why swimmers need to
drain our ears so the outer parts are
filled with air. But we also display
each day that fluid-filled inner ear
that suggests our ancient lineage,,
with earlier animals in the long
chain of vertebrates that have lived I~
on Earth for so very long.
May your holiday season be'
filled with nothing but good sounds
- which you can well and truly
hear.
(Dr. E. Kirsten Peters is a native
of the rural Northwest, but was
trained as a geologist at Princeton
and Harvard. This column is a serv-
ice of the College of Sciences at
Washington State Univelwity.)
281 E MAIN - BEACH ND ~/01-872-4362
Pull Bingo Black
Tabs Sandy Baertsch and Cindy Jack
Nuemiller $25/each Live Friday a Saturday
Hours: Mon-Fri. 3pm-lam Sat. lpm-lam
Happy Hour: Mon.-Thurs. 5:30-6:30pm
Dec. 7, 1941 shocked the
nation and was dubbed "'Day of
Infamy." All those who died from
the state of North Dakota as listed
by the Naval History & Heritage
Command died on the USS
Arizona (BB-39 Battleship). It
got the name "the day will live in
infamy," from President Franklin
Roosevelt.
Today, the Battleship Arizona
rests on silt in the harbor were it
sank 58 years ago. Richard V.
Welch, my father, was born on
Dec. 7, 1926, and he stated that
after the attack on Pearl Harbor
his birthday was never a glorious
event. Pearl Harbor Day was a
day to remember those who yelled
"Fire, Fire, Hit the creek!" My
father died in the -Veterans
Hospital during my senior year of
high school. He never spoke
much about his years of service in
WWII or the Korean War. Today
there are fewer veterans of that era
around to thank.
Richard V. Welch,
my father, was born
on Dec. 7, 1926,
and he stated that
after the attack on
Pearl Harbor his
birthday was never
a glorious event.
These are the names of those
from North Dakota who died on
the Arizona that Sunday: CPL
Edwin Charles Borusky USMC,
GM3c John Marvin Emery USN,
Sic Kenneth Edward Gebhardt
USN, S I c George Winston
Hammerud USN, PFC James
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(U.S.P.S. Pub.
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