twenty-seven things tagged “iowa”

“We All Want Clean H2O” is a Podcast about Water Quality, Policy, Agriculture, and Climate Change

It’s hosted by three University of Iowa engineers and scientists who are tired of “cropaganda” and is rather entertaining. The latest episode calls the recent E15 Law a “Fart in a Hurricane”.

One of the hosts is an engineer named Chris Jones who also writes a very lively blog with wonderful nuggets like this:

[…] corn ethanol for fuel is stupid. The industry exists by virtue of one reason and one reason only: government policy. The environmental benefits of using corn to produce a liquid biofuel HAVE ALWAYS been more desperation-half-court-heave than slam dunk, it’s lower potential energy when compared to gasoline makes the 10% blend number an obvious head fake, and its dominance of American politics has kept higher energy players sitting at the end of the bench. So why does ethanol get its ticket punched to the Big Dance year after year after year? Politics. Liberal politicians from Joe Biden to Amy Klobuchar to Dick Durban to Sherrod Brown to Cindy Axne to the Iowa City dogcatcher provide all the cover Republicans in general and Iowa Democratic state legislators in particular need to continue force feeding us this rancid cod liver oil until kingdom come.

The Iowa Singularity

See also: “Iowa is Addicted to Cornography”

Senator Grassley, People, and Party

More people like this, and on both sides, please.

Senator Grassley is 88 years old. He voted to oppose Judge Jackson’s nomination.

“Having carefully studied her record, unfortunately I think she and I have fundamentally different views on the role of judges and the role that they should play in our system of government because of those disagreements I can’t support her nomination,” Grassley said.

Jordain Carney, “Grassley to oppose Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination”, The Hill

Via JK.

Iowa’s Blackout License Plates

I just ordered a set of “blackout” plates from the DMV here. They’re rather cool and look like this:

Iowa blackout plates

I didn’t know that they were actually a solution to a problem. People would take existing, specialized plates for Dordt University and cover them up to look like the blackout plates.

Iowa Dordt University plates

Clever! But led to some unnecessary altercations with law enforcement since doing this was a legal gray area. State Senator Charles Schneider was able to get the mandate for blackout plates included in 2019. Just in that year, the state raised $850,000 through the sale of these plates for the Road Use Tax Fund (simple arithmetic suggests that ~14,000 people ordered them.)

I got all that from Aaron Calvin’s article in The Des Moines Register. Summarized it here since the Register’s website, like most websites these days, is an unreadable and unusable crock of shit.

Norm MacDonald at Iowa

Battling cancer for 9 years without telling anyone is the most Norm Macdonald shit ever.

Anthony Jeselnik

I had no idea that he performed at the Hancher Auditorium at The University of Iowa in 1997 and mortified most of a crowd of 1,200 excited kids and their parents who’d come to see him, Darrell Hammond, and Jim Breuer at the height of their SNL fame. The 250 or so who’d remained appear to have had a fantastic time:

"When Norm took the stage he immediately launched into a bit that was intentionally supposed to be offensive to most of the audience. As it went on, people got up and left in large numbers. Each time a new group would leave, he would make a remark like, ‘Did you think I was going to do airline jokes?’ or ‘Did you think I was going to hold up a picture of the Ayatollah and make a joke?’ Then he would double down on the dirty material to see how many more people he could drive out. It was clearly a game to see if he could empty out the place and after some time probably over two-thirds of the crowd had left.

[…] "Whoever booked the show comes in the green room all sweaty with his tie askew. He looked like he had seen a ghost. He says ‘You gotta go get him.’ Me, pull Norm off the stage? I’m not getting him. Breuer was laughing. He says, ‘I’m not getting him.’

"Me [Hammond] and Breuer knew something special was happening. He and I got chairs and sat on the side of the stage where nobody could see us. It was one of the most-brilliant shows I’ve ever seen.

"Anybody who thought Norm would change his act was sorely mistaken. Norm just didn’t care.

“He’s revered in the comedians’ world. He doesn’t bother with pretenses or correctness. He’s probably the original politically incorrect comedian. It’s not for a shock factor. It’s just who he is.”

Mike Hlas, “The night Norm Macdonald mortified the University of Iowa”, The Gazette (cached)

Here’s The Des Moines Register’s report:

Report on Norm MacDonald's performance at the University of Iowa in The Des Moines Register

Here’s Jim Breuer on the incident:

“The Water’s So Great That It Won Awards”

Was discussing water quality in Des Moines with DL. Told her that our city couldn’t hold a candle to Ames, that their water was the “cleanest around.” Wanted to prove this but couldn’t find the 2014 viral hit “Hooray for Ames” video anywhere on the internet. GN, blessed datahoarder that he is, luckily had a copy ❤️🚰

Whatever. 🤘 Go Hawks 🤘

Good Old Iowan Common Sense

As of the 4th of February 2021, and under its Governor’s wise, prescient, expert and data-driven leadership, Iowa ranks 47th in the nation for the number of vaccines administered 💯

Iowa has received 446,825 doses of vaccine and has administered 266,777 doses, or just under 60% of vaccines received, the CDC reported Thursday. The state has the sixth-lowest rate of administered vaccine per capita in the nation.

“We’re averaging about 60% in getting the vaccines administered and that’s not where we need to be,” Reynolds said. “We want to do better. We know we can do better.”

AP, “Iowa’s vaccination rate is 47th in the US”

We certainly can. The number of COVID-related deaths in Iowa stood at 5,033 as of this date. The very next day, our fearless Governor signed a Public Health Disaster proclamation that, compared to its predecessor, ended mask mandates and removed all limits on public gatherings.

In time for the Super Bowl, of course.

All of these relaxations at this stage of the pandemic make about as much sense as wearing underwear constructed out of nails and thumbtacks. If anything, Iowa should be enhancing precautions during the next several weeks, as long as the colder temperatures and drier air may be driving greater transmission of the virus. What is the scientific justification for what Reynolds has declared in the emergency declaration? It’s unclear. Seems like someone may owe Iowa an explanation.

Bruce Y. Lee, “#CovidKim Trends After Iowa Governor Reynolds Lifts Covid-19 Coronavirus Precautions”

Other the the usual bullshit conservative pabulum about freedom and small businesses and bootstraps and moochers and handouts, I don’t expect any explanation that makes sense.

On Winters

Taken completely out of context, for the letter itself is a lot of bro-y “locker room talk.”

My mind is dried up, exhausted. I’m disgusted to be back in this damned country where you see the sun in the sky about as often as a diamond in a pig’s asshole.

Gustave Flaubert, Letter to Ernest Chevalier, 14th November 1840

And especially when you simply don’t have any say in the matter:

How to Drive in Iowan Winters

If you rarely drive on snow, just pretend you’re taking your grandma to church. There’s a platter of biscuits and 2 gallons of sweet tea in glass jars in the back seat. She’s wearing a new dress and holding a crock pot full of gravy.

@Chadsu42

Idiots Out Walking Around - II

Informed Choice Iowa is a group that “unites Iowans seeking to preserve their medical freedoms.” They are “pro-science” folk that count “ex-vaxxers”, “selective vaxxers”, “non-vaxxers”, and “vaxxers” among their members. I’m guessing that this list doesn’t include a single practicing physician.

And here’s them celebrating their freedoms, by which they mean a blatant disregard for the science they claim to love and the Iowans they claim to serve. Need confirmation but I hear that eating at least two tubes of toothpaste is on the agenda for their next idiot congregation.

Here’s a local news story about this superspreader event.

Idiots Out Walking Around

Reynolds said election victories for Republicans in the state this week show Iowans support her approach. “It was a validation of our balanced response to COVID-19, one that is mindful of both public health and economic health,” Reynolds said.

Because political victories, not cases or deaths, should inform and ‘validate’ one’s strategy when dealing with a raging pandemic.

Should I Be Worried

is a simple and aptly-named COVID tracker that uses data from Johns Hopkins. As of September 1st 2020, my state of Iowa is #1 (woohoo!) with a 7-day infection rate of 261/100,000 people (“there might be 2 to 6 times as many recent infections”) and an R0 rate of 1.7. “Over the past 30 days, 246 people in Iowa have died of Covid-19. If Iowa remains on its current trajectory, expect to see more than three times as many deaths from Covid-19 over the next 30 days.” That’ll show 'em.

Every “safety plan” I’ve seen that would allow public schools to reopen requires that kids behave in ways that no child has ever behaved in the history of children.

Yep. And the tweet was in the context of school openings, but college towns like Ames and Iowa City, are no exceptions (like she continues.) I say we continue to doubt the science, exercise absolutely no discipline in the interest of the economy (because the Communist Kiwis maintain zero interest in restoring theirs as quickly as possible), yell at people who wear masks, fight Big Government telling us what to do, expect maturity and restraint from children and teenagers, have no bloody plan, defend our effete leaders who institute weak policies that are too little and too late, control the numbers and the narrative, and just continue to be awesome ♥️ That’ll show 'em. We’re only beginning to get tired of winning folks.

Iowa Is Awesome by @CockroachED on Reddit More Pasta

I am so proud to be an Iowan. Iowa is fucking awesome, and here is why:

  1. In 1838, before we were even a state, our Supreme Court upheld the law that in Iowa escaped slaves couldn’t be forced to return to a slave state. The same year it became law an unmarried women could own property. In most of the rest of the US either category having any rights was laughable and were considered property themselves.

  2. We were involved in a war with Missouri. The Honey War! was a border dispute that we Iowans may not have started but we sure as hell won.

  3. We were the second state in the union to allow interracial marriage (1851) almost a century before it became legal in the rest of the US.

  4. In 1851 Iowa legislated that, “the property of married women did not vest in her husband, nor did the husband control his wife’s property”.

  5. In 1857 University of Iowa, my alma mater (Go Hawkeyes!!), was the first state university to have a degree program open for women.

  6. For the American Civil War, Iowa contributed more men than any other state per capita. This despite the fact not a single major battle occurred on Iowan soil.

  7. Iowa outlawed segregated schools in 1868. We were the second state in the union to do it and we did it close to a century before the rest of America.

  8. Iowa elected the first women to public office in the united states, in 1869. That same year we were the first state to allow women to join the bar and we had the first female US attorney. This paved the way for Iowa to have the first female practice law before a federal court.

  9. Iowa was passing civil rights act, prohibiting discrimination in public, all the way back in 1884.

  10. Iowa was the third state (tip of the hat to Wyoming and Colorado for beating us to the punch)to give women the right to vote in 1894.

  11. Iowa has the first mosque in the US and the only exclusively Muslim cemetery.

  12. In 1953, amongst all the states of the union, only Iowa defeated a McCarthyistic legislative measure to impose a teacher’s loyalty oath.

  13. Iowa was the first to have an openly gay man run for a seat in Congress. And the guy was a Republican!

  14. In 2007, Iowa was the second state to allow full marriage to gays and lesbians.

  15. In Iowa we protect our children from from bullying due to sexual orientation AND gender identity.

tl;dr: And for the two part cherry on the cake…

16) 2008 Democrat Caucuses, Iowa became the first in the nation to select Barack Obama as their choice for president. This when almost all political pundits thought he wasn’t a viable candidate. For some perspective on the Iowa is 95% white. You have to go to the North Pole to find a whiter place.

17) Norman Borlaug is an Iowa native son, born and bred. Who is Norman Borlaug you ask yourself? Look him up! He was the greatest man who ever lived, a man who saved a billion lives (No hyperbole).

QED Bitches.

Richard Serra on Art

Q: Why make art? What do you find by doing it? What does it get you?

Serra: I always wanted an alternative existence. And by that I mean I wanted to do something where I could study my own sentiments and experiences. And I found that I can do that in relation to making things and making art in particular. And I did that since I was a kid it was a place I always could go to that I could concentrate and deal with the problems that I thought were of interest to me. And if I was clear enough about what it was that I was probing,
and stayed with the premise of I was probing, it was possible that it could also be clear to someone else, and it was important that it not be something that somebody else has done.

I think one of the things art does is that it asks you to perceive what it is on its own level […] I think works of art engage, possibly, an ‘internal memory bank’ that isn’t linear and it can make you see the outside reality in that way also.

That’s from a recording at the SF MoMA. I first heard of him after moving to Des Moines and seeing his “Five Plate Pentagon” at our beautiful sculpture park.


Image Source: DSM Public Art Foundation

Midwest Distances

Expression Real Distance
Next door 1 - 2 miles
Right up the road 5 - 10 miles
Up North 15 - 100 miles
A couple miles 10 - 20 miles
Not too far 20 - 50 minutes
A little ways Over an hour
A pretty good drive 2 hours+
Drive down there Literally any direction

Can attest 😆. Via.

Ankeny & Saudi Arabia

Ankeny or Saudi Arabia? If you had to choose one to live in, which would you pick?

Depends. One is full of religious wackos, and the other one is in a desert.

– /r/desmoines