In a little spur-of-the-moment thing, while stirring a pot of pasta at home, I picked up the phone and dialed 1-800-282-2882. To my surprise, I found myself talking to Mr. Snerdley, and I chimed in with my take on Measure 2. Last week Rush mentioned North Dakota and Measure 2, pointing out that people are way too worried about government getting enough money and not worried enough about keeping their own. That may be the case for some out there, but I had an alternate viewpoint to present, one on which I’ve elaborated here on the ol’ Blog before.
I didn’t get a chance to make one point: if Measure 2 had simply said, “State, county, and local governments may not levy, impose, or collect taxes on property” I would have voted an enthusiastic YES. That would have accomplished the job and allowed the legislature to react accordingly. That would give plenty of time for debate as to how to react and allow for the legislative process to work through any unexpected issues in the process.
Measure 2, however, nosed the issue into a constitutional corner. By prescribing what I call the “magic formula” method of the legislature to fund local government, the measure went too far…irreversibly so. In that case, if adjustments needed to be made, they could only be done by another constitutional measure. What a mess. It also worked retroactively, allowing no time for debate on specifics.
I spoke to a friend who was a huge proponent of Measure 2 from the beginning, and he told me that Measure 2 was simply “too long.” He’s the one that opened my eyes to the possibility above, that it should have simply done away with property taxes and stopped there. Instead, by codifying a solution for property tax replacement into constitutional law, it became a lesson in what I call “bad mechanics” and doomed itself to failure.
Anyway, you can check out the brief transcript of the Rush segment here. Not my most eloquent minute and a half, but at least I didn’t screw up my first nationwide radio appearance.
I’m sorry this isn’t iPhone enabled (silly that they won’t display Flash content) but I’ll have to work on compatibility another time. I uploaded this video to my blog’s Facebook page but they really destroy the video quality so I wanted to post it where it looks decent.
I’m a firm believer in applying enough bandwidth to make the video look decent in detail. I’d love to put it on YouTube or Vimeo, but there are problems with that. As a result, I’m hosting it myself in Flash Video (FLV) format. This will display on pretty much every device out there EXCEPT my beloved Apple devices – iPod, iPhone, iPad… bummer, but at least I maintain ownership of my content.
What’s that, you say? YouTube and Vimeo assume ownership of your content? Not exactly…but what they DO assume is a perpetual license to keep, use, distribute, and make new videos from your content. Once you upload to them, you’re without any rights whatsoever.
Here’s how you sign your rights away by uploading to YouTube, according to their Terms of Service page:
“However, by submitting Content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and YouTube’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your Content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under these Terms of Service. The above licenses granted by you in video Content you submit to the Service terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your videos from the Service. You understand and agree, however, that YouTube may retain, but not display, distribute, or perform, server copies of your videos that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by you in user comments you submit are perpetual and irrevocable.“(YouTube Terms of Service page)
Vimeo’s policies are equally disturbing:
“By submitting a video, you grant Vimeo and its affiliates a limited, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license and right to copy, transmit, distribute, publicly perform and display (through all media now known or hereafter created), and make derivative works from your video for the purpose of (i) displaying the video within the Vimeo Service; (ii) displaying the video on third party websites and applications through a video embed or Vimeo’s API subject to your video privacy choices; (iii) allowing other users to play, download, and embed on third party websites the video, subject to your video privacy choices; (iii) promoting the Vimeo Service, provided that you have made the video publicly available; and (iv) archiving or preserving the video for disputes, legal proceedings, or investigations.”(Vimeo Terms of Service Page)
So…have you uploaded something containing yourself, your kids, your friends, or anything else personal to you? Congratulations; you just signed away your rights to it. But it gets even worse; check out these two clauses:
“To the extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless YouTube, its parent corporation, officers, directors, employees and agents, from and against any and all claims, damages, obligations, losses, liabilities, costs or debt, and expenses (including but not limited to attorney’s fees) arising from: (i) your use of and access to the Service; (ii) your violation of any term of these Terms of Service; (iii) your violation of any third party right, including without limitation any copyright, property, or privacy right; or (iv) any claim that your Content caused damage to a third party. This defense and indemnification obligation will survive these Terms of Service and your use of the Service.”
and,
“You will indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Vimeo and its affiliates, directors, officers, employees, and agents, from and against all third party actions that: (i) arise from your activities on the Vimeo Service; (ii) assert a violation by you of any term of this Agreement; or (iii) assert that any content you submitted to Vimeo violates any law or infringes any third party right, including any intellectual property or privacy right.”
“Indemnify” means that if you post a video and someone decides to sue you for some reason – that could be that you used an Enya track without license, you showed someone in the video who did not give you permission to post their likeness on the Internet, or somehow otherwise prompted someone else to legal action – not only do you hold YouTube and Vimeo unaccountable, but you also agree to pay their legal expenses if they get sued for hosting your content. Do you have the money to pay for YouTube’s (ie, Google’s) or Vimeo’s legal team?
In the case of the video above, I take it (as with all my photography) very personally. That’s why I typically put those annoying watermarks on my photos; I got tired of seeing them pop up on people’s website or MySpace pages. I have no desire to give Google, Vimeo, or anyone else a legal license to do whatever they want with it. And, although I’m using the music under license, I don’t want to possibly expose myself to some huge corporation’s legal expenses.
By the way, Facebook has similar language but within different parameters (ie, subject to your Privacy settings). When it comes to Pages, which is how my blog operates there, it appears that Facebook makes no such assertions. Otherwise no other corporation would open up a Page there on Facebook because they’re not willing to relinquish their intellectual property rights either. However, if your personal Facebook account is public, so is your data – photos, posts, whatever – and you give them the rights to use them accordingly.
I have posted stuff to YouTube in the past, but not stuff that’s personally important to me. The exception to that would be my tribute to Sergeant Steve Kenner of the Bismarck PD, a video that I wanted to share with the community. When it comes to things like this though, where I want to reserve all rights of ownership and use, I’ve got to host it myself and suffer some compatibility issues. It doesn’t work the best across all platforms, but it remains mine.
I’m kind of bewildered at why a new digital television channel, 43.1, is transmitting some sort of Aryan Iranian 24/7 broadcast. I don’t know what the actual content is, since I don’t speak Farsi…but there it is.
I actually was clued into this little broadcast by a friend who lives on the north end of town; those of us living down south are unable to pick it up, apparently. I have an excellent antenna array and usually get a 96% or greater signal on the locals, but I can’t get channel 43-1.
My friend surmises that New Song Church is operating this station (for instance, check the GPS location of the transmitter) and has attempted to contact someone at the church, but has not received a response. There’s a pretty good paper trail on this station, though:
– EICB stands for Excellence in Christian Broadcasting, and they have a partially finished website template running with a ton of Lorem Ipsum text placeholders.
– The content appears to be a “Free Iran” sort of theme, as an opposition to the Islamic regime currently in control of Iran. The weird term that stuck out to me was “Aryaee”.
– A cursory Google search for “Aryaee” reveals it to be a term associated with Zoroastrianism, an ancient Persiam transcendentalist religion. The imagery on the ieatv.com website doesn’t look very Christian. So what gives?
Apparently “Aryaee” can also be a racial reference (remember Hitler’s fascination with the Aryan race?) that applies to people of this area, and some claim that the name Iran comes from Aryan. That would fit with a theme of national pride you’d expect from an opposition broadcast, such as a “Free Iran” sort of thing. But why Bismarck?
Often what happens with these little low-power (LPTV) stations is that a local custodian is hired to maintain the physical operation of the transmitter for an out-of-state owner, without doing anything related to content. A satellite receiver is hooked to a transmitter, and voila’ – instant TV station. So…could this be a case of a receiver turned to the wrong transponder?
I don’t see any mention of Iran Aryaee TV on the EICB TV website. Hopefully my friend gets a response back from the parties he emailed soon, I’d love to hear the story behind this one – at this point I’ve got more questions than answers!
I kid you not: that’s pretty much the implied message this bizarre tourism ad for North Dakota delivers. I’m still trying to figure out how this could have seemed like a good idea.
Since they’re willing to take this bizarre (and tasteless) approach to luring visitors and tourists to North Dakota, maybe they’d like to try my attempt from a while back:
When the Will Smith movie “I Am Legend” came out, I had a little fun with its post-apocalyptic movie poster by applying it to North Dakota’s then-fledgling “I Am Legendary” campaign (again, who comes up with this stuff).
At the time I thought I’d made a somewhat funny, but oddball and questionable attempt at a tourism poster. It has just been demonstrated that it’s possible to do much worse.
(Update – While rubbing two brain cells together to generate a comment on the Great Plains Examiner site, I came up with this barely coherent screed…)
I understand that the “Leave a Legend” campaign is the underlying theme…that tag line with this photo was simply a BAD combination. Without the “leave a legend” text on this ad, you take a LOT of wind out of the critics’ sails. Even so, it’s not a great tourism ad.
I’m a North Dakota Ambassador, and as such I think we’ve got far better things to promote than downtown night life. Even if one wants to dispel any perceived misconceptions that we don’t have any thriving metro areas, why not find a more family-friendly setting such as a unique restaurant or something with broader appeal? Who are we trying to attract to our state, and do we expect them to bring their families?
We locals may tire of promoting things like Teddy Roosevelt’s sojourn here, but let’s not forget that we have something unique that people want to come and see. Despite North Dakota tourism’s inexplicable ad buys within the state, our campaign should be targeted at the tourists we wish to attact to North Dakota, not at the locals. If you want to encourage tourism within the state, Marketing 101 should tell you to generate a separate campaign for that separate objective.
By the way, aren’t we telling local youths that there’s more to do around here than drinking? I sure am…I’ve been spinning that broken record since the 1980s. So now we have an ad touting the bar scene. Great.
Hopefully this will cause some folks at ND Tourism and their favorite ad agency to step back and take a fresh look at some things. In that case, some good will have come from this blunder.
If you’re familiar with this blog you probably know that I started it out of a love for North Dakota and Bismarck-Mandan in general. I have an fond affection for and connection with our cites and our state, and because I tend to bump haphazardly into really cool things from time to time I felt compelled to share them with words and pictures. I’m not alone.
For years my friend and former co-worker Matt Fern has been exercising his creative abilities doing what he does best: storytelling with a visual medium. We’ve had numerous conversations over the years about North Dakota stories just waiting to be told, and that same spark that drove me to start this website has driven Matt to start his new feature, the Daily Dakotan. In this series he’s found an interesting selection of people with unique personal connections to North Dakota, and he delivers their stories using their own words and his captivating storytelling skills. Here’s an official rollout:
Professional filmmaker and Bismarck native Matt Fern has announced the launch of the video series, Daily Dakotan. Each episode in this online series profiles a different North Dakota resident and his or her unique contributions to the community.
“With Daily Dakotan, I wanted to explore the North Dakota community,” says Fern. “I thought by letting individuals tell their diverse stories, I would ultimately start to tell the story of North Dakota. For example, we talk to a guy who came home to start a newspaper, a grandmother making a difference at the state prison, and even a musician who’s turned a karaoke hobby into a cult-favorite TV show.”
Fern says he’s already recorded and edited 24 Daily Dakotan episodes, each less than three-minutes long. He’ll release episodes to the public starting November 21st at www.DailyDakotan.com, with new episodes and bonus clips added every weekday through the end of the year. A Facebook page and Twitter feed have been created for anybody wishing to be notified when new episodes become available at Facebook.com/DailyDakotan and Twitter.com/DailyDakotan.
Fern attended film school in Bozeman, Montana, and has been working in advertising agencies for the past 5 years. He is currently executive director of the Bismarck-based video advertising company, the Creative Treatment.
The series starts today, with the first episode appearing below:
As you can tell from the photo at the top of this post, you may encounter an appearance by yours truly sometime down the road…but don’t let that stop you from enjoying this series! I have been given a “sneak peek” at a couple of finished episodes, and I can assure you that these will be both entertaining and heartwarming. If you love North Dakota now, wait until you get to share the stories of other North Dakotans who contribute to our state’s greatness.
Visit DailyDakotan.com to find Matt’s YouTube channel for this project, and be sure to subscribe and share! You can also contact Matt by email at info@dailydakotan.com.
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.
I couldn’t help but wince a bit when someone at a daily Missouri River Flood Briefing repeatedly mentioned misinformation on “the blogs” and by “the bloggers” a couple of days ago. Personally, I was sitting in one of the Operations Centers doing my job instead of blogging, but I was still a little put out by that remark.
I don’t know there WERE so many Bismarck- or Mandan-specific blogs, actually. I like Randy Hoffman’s site and (even though we’re ideological opposites) I enjoy Cat’s writing. So who’s spreading all the misinformation?
Well, certainly it isn’t me. In fact, aside from some campy photos of the swamped riverboat, I’ve been far too busy to even get out an see the flooding in person. Even if I did, I think the past several years have proved that I’ve behaved responsibly overall in what, where, when, and how I post stuff on this site.
I guess it’s not so much personal offense as it is the way many people speak about “bloggers” with disdain. Having worked in the communications industry for decades, I could cite plenty of examples of irresponsible journalism from various media outlets in this town. Having a set of call letters or a printing press doesn’t give you any more credibility than the guy who has discovered a story and wants to articulate it.
Being a “citizen journalist” or “blogger” doesn’t make one righteous or noble, either; however, anyone who claims having a J-school degree somehow gives you a)credibility, b)accuracy, or c)integrity needs to wake up and smell the coffee.
As you should have deduced by now, I’m an information junkie. As usual, I have a few links that you may find useful. Rather than act like I have all the answers, I like to point you to the people who do. I haven’t seen these linked anywhere else, so here goes:
If you’re wondering what the river stage is at various measuring points, just click below:
My favorite, which gives you a TON of information about just about every aspect of the various dams and reservoirs in our area of concern, can be viewed by clicking below:
There’s quite a variety of information available at the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Missouri River Basin Water Management Division’s website, just click below:
I said it before, I’ll say it again: I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I probably have some hyperlinks to help you inform yourself. Having said that ad nauseum and after posting all those links to dizzying information above, let me point this out:
bismarck.org and cityofmandan.com are STILL your best bet for reliable information.
Not facebook, not your neigbor, not even local media.
Do yourself a favor and find your own information from the source. Find out your home’s elevation, watch the river, learn what a river release rate means in relation to a river stage level and how that stage level relates to elevation. Once you get your noodle wrapped around triangulating rate/stage/elevation, you will be able to assess your flood risk very quickly. Better yet, you’ll see through much of the other misinformation.
Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn;
and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls? -Luke 12;24
This counsel from Jesus was a good starting point for Luke Graner as he performed at the Belle Mehus a while back. You may remember my photos from the event. Being a Bible lover myself, I caught on pretty quickly to the opening tune.
Luke uses a very interesting method to construct his music, using a Boomerang looping device to build his songs in layers as we watch and listen. Many times he’ll have multiple instances of his own voice accompanying him. Thus, for the first song, Luke sang with Luke from the Gospel of Luke. Fantastic.
While on the notorious Cold War Mancation™ we made a brief stop at one of North Dakota’s largest landmarks: the KVLY TV tower near Blanchard. If you know what you are looking for, you can actually see this tower from Interstate 94. You can also see its counterpart, the KXJB TV tower, which is relatively nearby and only three feet shorter.
I am no longer employed by the company that owns and/or operates these towers, but I do get to work with them from time to time. It’s been years since I’ve been inside the big reinforced building that houses the transmitter for this beast. In fact, I had to find a new way to get here since the old gravel road is currently flooded. The last time I was here, there was a crew working hard to make some adjustments or repairs to the main transmitter and get it back online. At least they didn’t have to climb the tower!
This beast stands 2,063 feet tall. It has been the tallest manmade object in the world for years. At one time I believe a tower in Europe took the title, but sadly it was unable to bear the load and collapsed. The title then reverted to KVLY’s tower until the recent construction of the “Burj Khalifa” in Dubai. One could be nitpicky and point out that it’s the tallest manmade object in North America, or even in the free world.
By the way, there’s a tiny elevator about the size of a phone booth that goes up the center of this tower’s triangular structure…but not all the way. At some point, you’ve got to get out and climb. No thanks, I’ll just enjoy the view from below!
I could give you all kinds of amazing stats about the miles of supporting guy wires or million pounds of steel, but I think KVLY’s own website does a great job of that. While this tower gets all the glory, it is noteworthy to point out that the second tower, built by former rival and current sister station in the Valley News Live family, is merely three feet shorter. Not only does North Dakota hve the tallest manmade object outside of the oppressive Middle East, it’s got two of ’em.
This is an update to a post I originally wrote about a little tidbit I discovered through /film back in May. It’s a pretty cool “viral marketing” campaign for an upcoming movie. This one just happens to feature North Dakota. It all started with this movie teaser trailer:
At the end of the trailer there’s a flicker of film leader that someone took still images of to get the words “SCARIEST THING I EVER SAW.” From there they decided to visit the website “scariestthingieversaw.com.” On that website was a simulator for a PDP-11, an old mainframe computer like the ones I used to get in trouble on in the 80s. It displayed a timer, and once the timer counted down certain features were enabled. One of those was to print these two images:
When you print them out, they appear to be newspaper pages from the 1940s that have some hidden features. One of the not-so-hidden features is an ad for Rocket Poppeteers, a popsicle-like treat. JJ Abrams is known to put fictitious foods in his movies and mention them by name, but this one’s getting some prominent treatment. (Yes, there’s a rocketpoppeteers.com website, but it doesn’t do anything…yet.) The ad contains a form to mail in to “Become a Rocket Poppeteer and Join the Race to Outer Space!” Where do you send it? Minot, North Dakota.
Naturally, being the curious sort, I filled out one of these forms to see what might happen. So far, nothing has been mailed back to me. No MIBs have showed up at my house, even ones posing as census workers. If that changes, I’ll let you know.
Why does Minot tie into this? Well, the teaser trailer seems to center around Area 51 and UFOs & aliens. UFO believers have reports of UFO activity around United States nuclear weapons facilities going back for decades, so it makes sense that the movie would include a reference to North Dakota…a somewhat remote, maybe even mysterious to some, place with lots of nukes. The X-Files featured an episode where a UFO was hidden in a hollowed-out nuclear missile silo in North Dakota, so why not take the idea to feature film?
Being familiar with central North Dakota, the presence of Air Force bases and nuclear weapons in our great state, and the whole UFO conspiracy theory subculture to a degree, I got a kick out of this viral campaign. While I’m not one of the UFO conspiracy theorists, I find them entertaining to watch. It’ll be interesting to see where and how far this movie takes this campaign and how heavily it features our great state.
—————————— UPDATE ———————————-
Here’s where the new stuff starts: I got a letter in the mail from Rocket Poppeteers yesterday. Enclosed is a congratulatory letter, in 1940s-era typewriter font, with my name handwritten in a blank salutation.
As you can see, the letter has the Minot PO Box return address and a legitimate Minot, ND postmark. Whoever is checking the post office box, filling out the letters, and mailing them out is presumably from the Minot area.
This is the text of the letter, although there’s more on the page. The letter mentions a ‘Captain “Coop” Cooper’ a couple of times, so I suppose he’ll be featured in the movie. There’s no official information available at this time, at least none that I found.
Since the letter asks, “Are you ready to begin?” I can only hope that this is the start of a continued Rocket Poppeteers adventure – and that North Dakota may feature heavily in the upcoming Super8 movie. If I receive any additional mail or details, I’ll post it here!
