I was getting all ready to rave about my love of storms, too - and also commiserate with you about my love for North Dakota - and yet that first comment is a big BUZZKILL. Blech. How boring.

I will not let it sway me from my path.

I have told you my feelings about North Dakota, Mitch, even though I only drove through there once. I was lucky enough to be driving through in early October, and it was very rainy, with spectacular bursts of sunshine - and because the landscape is so wide and open, sometimes the rain and the sun would be happening at the same time. My favorite was when we could see the massive rainstorm happening miles away, the clouds thick and black and low - with the sweeping black streams of rain coming out from beneath - with random forks of lightning coming out of it. My boyfriend and I couldn't even SPEAK it was so beautiful.

Red,

'scuze me for a second here. Be right back.

Dan,

You needed to actually *look* a bit. Sort of like with every comment you've ever left...

http://www.shotinthedark.info/archives/005967.html

Do try to be a bit more thorough, next time.

OK, back to Red:

I moved to the Cities from NoDak on a day with just such a storm chasing me. I could see it in my rear-view mirror as I drove east. I lost it around Fergus Falls. Seemed oddly appropriate at the time.

I'll have to write about that, given that I'm closing in on the 20th anniversary of moving here...

mitch - Now that I think of it, my boyfriend and I were driving towards the storm the entire time. Which, in retrospect, is HIGHLY appropriate. :)

Ha!

Those are some of my favorite stories of yours.

The closest I ever came to something like that was one time when I was a game aide for a live-action fantasy role-playing game. (If that means nothing, try "producer for a 200-person outdoor improv theater production".)

The game was in the mountains about 10 miles west of Boulder, CO. I was travelling along with one of the teams late in the day when I saw a line of three funnel clouds maybe a mile away. (Distance estimate unreliable.) I called the game designer on the radio and suggested that he might want to "take a look to the west".

Since we were about a mile from any conceivable shelter, I explained to the players I was travelling with what they should do if the funnels touched down near us (lay face-down in the ditch we were walking next to.)

At the time, I wasn't especially worried, but since those tornados killed (IIRC) four people in a town about four miles away a few minutes later, I suspect that I was deluding myself.

One of the odder aspects of the situation was that one of the players in a different group was a researcher with the NSSL (National Severe Storms Laboratory) from Norman, OK. She found the opportunity to observe mountain tornadoes fascinating. Apparently, they had been attested previously, but never adequately enough for the NSSL.

Dan,

"The intent and purpose of the study is clearly stated - to measure perception against confirmed conditions..."

...and my intent and purpose is to show that the "confirmed conditions" weren't. There were holes in the original premise, and bigger ones in its presentation.

Give it up yourself, Dan. You are trying to put lipstick on a pig.

You are spending a lot of time and effort to try to support a "study" that was in fact fatally flawed to the point of pointlessness, and whose only "value" was to purport to show people like you how special you are.

You can jump up and down and chant "you lose, you lose, you lose" until your teeth hurt. The fact is, the study is a piece of crap.

Oh, yeah - and among many of the things I do for a living is blind polling and surveying. Which is why I criticized this one so much and, dare I say, so completely.

Give it up yourself, Dan. Even if you had the intellectual chops to dance on this one, you can't make gold from dog poop.

Doug:

"a 200-person outdoor improv theater production"????

Where do I sign up? That sounds SO COOL!

That does sound kinda cool. Red, if you do it, stop by on your way to Boulder so I can hitch a ride.

I have heard of different flavors of these things. On the one hand, the big outdoor D&D productions seemed like...well, D&D. On the other hand, a few years ago when I pondered joining a historical re-enactment group (WWII Canadian Paratroopers), I passed - partly due to the cost (more than I could manage at the time) and partly because it was just too passive; I'm more interested in fighting my own battle than re-enacting someone else's, all other things being equal.

Which ignores, of course, the logistical challenge of re-fitting a Lee-Enfield Mk. IV (or a Bren Gun!) to fire paintballs...

"You do this for a living and you come up with those questions? Jeeez. Remind me never to hire you."

As if you'd ever...oh, you know where I'm going with this. Maybe.

Anyway - I reject the premise of the study, for reasons that were in the post (which, if you had any manners, would be where you posted your little ventings).

"The fact is...FOX viewers are among the most ill-informed of all consumers of major media news"

And I called that "fact" into question, and the question is valid.

"In addition, you never once established how any of the questions from the study were pushing a response"

I mis-wrote - or, rather, misunderstood the original poll. It was a shoddy poll, shoddily reported. And you continue to ignore the questions and the shoddiness.

"What I find really quite humorous is that you comment on me spending too much time and effort supporting this study."

And you do. *It's my blog*. I write about what I want to write about. You, on the other hand, are a commenter.

"You couldn't do it so instead, you deliver this rambling verbose essay which completely evades and avoids answering the challenge."

Right. I rejected your original question (based on my own mis-reading) and proceeded to destroy the premise of the survey. You continue to natter about a question that is now irrelevant.

"Talk about wasted effort."

I say the same thing every time I read your obsessive tripe.

"Oh yeah and among many of the things I do for a living as a marketing manager are market / consumer research, market analysis and host moderator for focus groups. oh... and I also design research studies, something I started when I worked as a research supervisor in the data collections department back in 1983."

Well, isn't that special? I do a lot of the same things.

By pretty universal acclamation, I'm very, very good at it.

Ta.

red: "Where do I sign up? That sounds SO COOL!"

LARP is strange, and only rarely is it as cool as it sounds. Frankly, only rarely is it as cool as I remember it (selection bias).

There are times when things work out so that it's sublime (chanting and marching across a field toward the climactic battle while the fog rises behind the bad guys at dusk, in one memorable game.) The first several games are a blast, almost regardless of their inherent quality, if only for the novelty. After a while, though (about fifteen years for me, but I'm stubborn), I'd experienced most of the stories you can tell in the (necessarily) tightly controlled format of a linear game and worked pretty much every job possible on the production side (from safety officer, to game master, to editing committee member). The game became (for me) not worth the effort. Still, I had lots of fun at times.

I'm still pretty close to many of the members of the local group, should you be (or become) serious about trying it. For that matter, there may still be a group in Milwaukee (it used to be pretty strong, but I haven't followed the IFGS recently).

mitch: "the big outdoor D&D productions seemed like...well, D&D."

Yeah, pretty much, along with hiking, obstacle courses, and fencing. It's an odd mix, and sometimes gets pretty physically demanding. There is an ongoing, fundamentally unresolved, discussion about how much should be done by the player and how much should you be able to game around ("Sure, I'm a wimp, but my character....)

mitch: "I'm more interested in fighting my own battle than re-enacting someone else's, all other things being equal."

I agree, and that's one of the attractions of the IFGS and SCA. There's a sport/game attraction to them that just isn't present in straight re-enacting.

One of the problems I had with the IFGS's specific implementation of the combat part of the game is that it required you to be able to do math at the same time as you were trying to fence. The combination of complex left-brain and right-brain tasks was difficult. I'm pretty good at each, but trying to do both simultaneously, well....

Dan,

"If the way you constructed your own poll"

I didn't construct a poll, genius. I poked a bunch of holes in the one you tossed out.

But to you, apparently, if the "survey" says so, it must be right. I posted link after link of material that directly contradicted the "informed" conclusion - but no matter to Dan, apparently.

But silly - I'm arguing with a guy who uses things like "pResident" with a straight face. That, by the way, automatically kills all credibility.

By the way, it's "Grandiosity", genius.

Go hang out with the Kossacks (since you're talking about the willfully ignorant and stupid).

Yes, Dan, I can "handle" your posts. I've handled them pretty handily.

What I can't stand is your relentless, insulting incivility. You can question me all you want; but you don't add enough to the discussion that losing your "input" pains me in the least. People can criticize me all they want - and many do. You can disagree with everything I say, I don't care.

I've had thousands of comments from hundreds of people, Dan, some of them INTENSELY critcal:

http://www.shotinthedark.info/archives/004591.html

I've gotten all kinds. And yet this is the only time in 3.5 years I"ve ever been even tempted to disemvowel a commenter. You're not just wrong, not just abrasive and insulting, not just an asshole, not just condescending while putting forth trite, tiresome, dull-witted arguments - you're all that and less. Life's too short.

Oh, yeah - mustard gas is a chemical weapons. Chemical weapons are WMDs, by definition.

It's like arguing with a spoiled sixth-grader, and not an especially bright one. When you can act like an adult, you can have your vowels back. Otherwise, you can go away mad, as long as you go away.

Oddly, you make almost as much sense without vowels as with.

"Wld w hv gn t wr nd klld thsnds f rqs nd lst 1800 mrcns"

N, bt whn y dd n th fct tht th wr wsn't jst abt WMD, I mght.

The call in number is 651-289-4488, as is clearly noted on the show AND station websites.

Huh? Can't make out a word you're saying.

It's like you don't exist.