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Barataria - the work of Erik Hare

  • First Big Snow

    Number of comments: 7
    A SEVERE WINTER STORM WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED .. Have they ever issued a Humorous Winter Storm Warning? It’s always a very severe affair, never something lighthearted that we can all get into. You know, the kind of thing that goes down before the commercial break on the evening nooze, delivered [...]
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    Posted: December 09, 2009, 9:22am EST
    by wabbitoid

  • Afghanistan

    Number of comments: 6
    I got into the cab slowly enough to size up the situation.  One car in the family means that every once in a while I’m well and truly stranded, public transportation not being enough.  I have to trust some other person to be a decent driver who will get me [...]
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    Posted: December 07, 2009, 10:05am EST
    by wabbitoid

  • Illusions

    Number of comments: 9
    “The illusions which exalt us are dearer than ten thousand truths” - Aleksandr Pushkin Perhaps it’s the chill of December closing in on me, but I’ve been thinking a lot about Pushkin lately – and this quote is a favorite.  Pushkin was, like so many Russian writers, a man who found nearly [...]
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    Posted: December 03, 2009, 7:20pm EST
    by wabbitoid

  • Impact Journalism

    Number of comments: 5
    In order to clarify the goals a writer might have when writing on the internet, I’ve separated most prose into two distinct types – writing to inform and writing to convince.  The problem with this, naturally, is that there is a lot of grey space between them.  Quality writing always [...]
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    Posted: December 02, 2009, 10:46am EST
    by wabbitoid

  • Blank Slate

    Number of comments: 8
    Is there anything that is truly “objective” in our world?  Can a news organization really be “fair and balanced”?  These may seem like noble ideals for reporting on the world around us, but if the standards are often a bit out of reach for most mortals it’s probably better to [...]
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    Posted: November 29, 2009, 6:01pm EST
    by wabbitoid

  • Outstate

    Number of comments: 3
    A little time spent with family outside of Bemidji is a good thing.  They’re not my immediate family, so to me the stories are just what’s going on in a world I normally don’t think about all that much.  For this day after Thanksgiving, I only have a few random [...]
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    Posted: November 27, 2009, 10:38am EST
    by wabbitoid

  • Thanksgiving

    Number of comments: 5
    Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday in that it is anything but unique.  It is a holiday that transcends all the different people and traditions that came together in this one place to be a different people yet.  Our national identity appeals to the most base and simple instincts of [...]
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    Posted: November 24, 2009, 8:03pm EST
    by wabbitoid

  • Deliverance

    Number of comments: 7
    It starts with a need to get out of England because the ruling class was making life hard for them.  It ends up as one of those myths that anyone can insert whatever truth they want into. The story of the Pilgrims is a worth a hard look because we [...]
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    Posted: November 22, 2009, 8:41pm EST
    by wabbitoid

  • Convincing

    Number of comments: 7
    Writing as a reporter, a Citizen Journalist, requires a cool touch that can be hard to make exciting.  That’s probably why it’s not all that popular on the internet.  Most of the writing that we see in a political or newsworthy context isn’t writing to inform but to convince.  It [...]
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    Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:08pm EST
    by wabbitoid

  • Sarah Palin

    Number of comments: 6
    Sarah Palin.  Is there any other name that can launch a thousand conversations with at least as many nuances as hers?  Not right now, there isn’t.  For better or worse, Sarah Palin is an icon of our times.  As Newsweek recently proclaimed, “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?”  [...]
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    Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:39pm EST
    by wabbitoid

  • Northstar

    Number of comments: 8
    Today the Northstar Commuter Rail line opens from Target Field  to Big Lake, with an extension to St. Cloud coming soon.  It’s a commuter rail line, meaning that it’s a full-blown train operating on existing tracks, costing $320M for the 40 miles that it will run.  It’s expected to carry [...]
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    Posted: November 15, 2009, 7:56pm EST
    by wabbitoid

  • Currency

    Number of comments: 9
    I’ve been thinking about money lately.  No, not just because I need more of it, but that haunts all of us from time to time.  I’ve been thinking about how the various attempts at making our US currency more colorful and difficult to slap into a copier and come up [...]
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    Posted: November 12, 2009, 8:34pm EST
    by wabbitoid

  • Quality

    Number of comments: 12
    I’ve long been a believer in the power of Citizen Journalism, but I’ve never seen myself as any kind of expert or leader in the field.  One of the things missing in the field has been a definitive primer on quality in Citizen Journalism.  No one has written one yet, [...]
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    Posted: November 10, 2009, 9:09pm EST
    by wabbitoid

  • First Job

    Number of comments: 7
    Think back for a moment to your first summer job.  You may have landed an unpaid internship, or if you were as lucky as I was a grunt job doing all the things no one else wanted to in a power plant.  It probably wasn’t glamorous or particularly exciting, but [...]
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    Posted: November 09, 2009, 9:25am EST
    by wabbitoid

  • Retelling the Reality

    Number of comments: 9
    The subject came up, as so many of these things do, while trying to explain things to my daughter.  She understands that ordinary people banding together made great history happen.  But there are so many holes that don’t entirely make sense until we get into it a bit deeper, such [...]
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    Posted: November 05, 2009, 8:01pm EST
    by wabbitoid

  • Demographic Destiny

    Number of comments: 7
    When Norman Borlaug died recently at the age of 95, his obituary included one of the most extraordinary claims that any human could ever possibly make.  Because of the “Green Revolution” that he pioneered, the ability of this planet to produce food to support the human population was dramatically increased.  [...]
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    Posted: November 03, 2009, 9:25pm EST
    by wabbitoid

  • All Politics is Local

    Number of comments: 5
    Tuesday is Election Day here in Saint Paul.  It hasn’t been an exciting election, but that only figures.  As the economic situation continues, there’s little for local governments all across the nation to do but settle in for a long siege.  There’s a good reason for this. Local elections can be [...]
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    Posted: November 01, 2009, 7:06pm EST
    by wabbitoid

  • Helical Waves

    Number of comments: 4
    I’ve been thinking about waves lately.  Waves as a concept, waves as a constant, waves as the continuity that ties so many things that don’t seem related together.  This is one of those columns that might not make a lot of sense, but I hope you can bear with me.  [...]
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    Posted: October 29, 2009, 7:16pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Skills

    Number of comments: 7
    It’s one thing to preach the values of keeping your eyes open and your mind awake to the endless possibilities of the world.  It’s often quite another to learn how to do this.  As a father, I’m constantly aware my duty to not only teach my children but teach them [...]
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    Posted: October 27, 2009, 7:33pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Lighter than Air

    Number of comments: 9
    When I read that Rush Limbaugh fell for a hoax that was said to be a college thesis by President Obama, I immediately thought of the old joke.  What’s the difference between Rush Limbaugh and the Hindenburg?  One is a flaming Nazi gasbag, and the other is a dirigible.  This [...]
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    Posted: October 25, 2009, 7:01pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Reboot

    Number of comments: 9
    It happens all the time.  You are working away, doing absolutely nothing wrong, but deep inside the system there is an unseen flaw.  Everything starts to bog down, and eventually you see it’s come to a screeching halt.  The only choice you have is to reboot, a three-fingered salute done [...]
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    Posted: October 22, 2009, 8:46pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Scene, Unseen

    Number of comments: 4
    What we know about our past is often heavily filtered through something like “conventional wisdom”. Certain “great men” are raised up as heroes while others are confined to the footnotes of history.  The names that we hear often get credit for far more than they deserve as they ossify into [...]
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    Posted: October 20, 2009, 7:48pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Big Mac Index

    Number of comments: 9
    Very few people in the USofA have ever worried about currency exchange, at least once they returned from a vacation in another nation.  The US Dollar has been a stable rock in the world that simply has not been subject to the ups and downs of foreign commerce as much [...]
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    Posted: October 18, 2009, 8:36pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Just Sayin’

    Number of comments: 7
    Every language has a few words or phrases that are used because everyone is used to them.  Some of them work pretty well, but others are used in silly ways.  If you take the world at face value, some of them are literally very funny without meaning to be. You can [...]
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    Posted: October 16, 2009, 12:24am EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Newsbobber

    Number of comments: 9
    One of the hottest topics in journalism is the future of the craft itself.  Newspapers are laying off reporters at a rapid clip at the same time that technology has made “citizen journalists” out of any blogger willing to take up the handle.  What is the future of a profession [...]
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    Posted: October 14, 2009, 10:27am EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Dia de la Raza

    Number of comments: 10
    Today is an important holiday throughout the Spanish-speaking parts of the lands we know as The Americas.  Not one land but many, they are all united by the simple fact that on 12 October 1492 their worlds changed forever.  The holiday is known throughout most of these lands as Dia [...]
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    Posted: October 11, 2009, 7:48pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • A Sense of Place

    Number of comments: 11
    The thesis is simple – cars are the enemy of strong cities.  Despite a tremendous amount of writing on this topic, people’s opinions on the matter have rarely changed – they either agree with this idea or they don’t.  There isn’t a lot of middle ground.  But as we come [...]
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    Posted: October 08, 2009, 8:04pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Young at Heart

    Number of comments: 12
    An economy that is struggling needs an injection of cash to get it going again, at least according to basic Keynesian economic theory. That’s more or less what our government is doing right now, and  we’re running up massive debts in order to do it.  The biggest concern is how [...]
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    Posted: October 07, 2009, 9:48am EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • ForEx is Foretold

    Number of comments: 20
    A year ago, the realities of the economy were just beginning to sink in.  The situation that we know now as a Recession, Depression, bailout, or whatever you want to think about didn’t happen overnight, but realization of it came to most people very quickly, like a nightmare that hit [...]
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    Posted: October 04, 2009, 7:34pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • A Pattern Language

    Number of comments: 16
    On a cold, rainy day there’s nothing like a stolen moment waiting for a prospective client and a thick book to fill it.  What makes it even more profound is when I have a small fixation rattling around in my head and the book is the tome that ties together [...]
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    Posted: October 01, 2009, 8:14pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Social Networks

    Number of comments: 9
    Everything we do is influenced by social networks.  That’s what Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler argue in their book, “Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives“.  While it might seem obvious that if people you meet on a daily basis are upbeat and [...]
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    Posted: September 29, 2009, 9:38pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Anime

    Number of comments: 11
    What do you do when you’re stuck in a rut?  Is doing the same, old same-old really good enough?  The answer can be found in entertainment, at least if you’re willing to go along with the flow and accept something very different.  In a world that seems like it’s full [...]
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    Posted: September 27, 2009, 8:07pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Keep Fighting

    Number of comments: 14
    The world of political blogs is a world where people often zing each other and make small rhetorical points for the simple reason that this is how the game is played.  If you read Barataria often, you’ll know that I have little time for this.  I was called to task [...]
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    Posted: September 24, 2009, 9:43pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Late Night Politics

    Number of comments: 7
    President Obama’s appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman was a brilliant performance for many reasons.  The most obvious was the simple and direct way he related his goals and how he hoped to achieve them, casually bringing the whole country into his inner circle.  Less obvious was how [...]
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    Posted: September 22, 2009, 9:37pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Excellent

    Number of comments: 7
    It’s been fashionable for the last 10 years to write endlessly about the wonders that computers and the internet have brought to our lives.  The Federal Reserve has even taken to fudging productivity numbers based on what they call the “hedonic adjustment” – the supposed increases in productivity that this [...]
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    Posted: September 20, 2009, 8:26pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Learned Helplessness

    Number of comments: 14
    “What can you do?”  Often said under a deep sigh, it’s something I’ve heard even more often than “What happened?” recently.  People venting their anger have become a staple on the evening nooze, but resigned apathy remains a much more common emotion in response to the Depression.  It’s the economic [...]
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    Posted: September 17, 2009, 8:27pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Football

    Number of comments: 8
    Football is the most intellectual of all the major sports in the USofA.  Go ahead, laugh, but it’s true.  All those breaks between plays are more than time for wagging commentary and the occasional Bud commercial, they are a chance for the coach to send in a play that one [...]
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    Posted: September 15, 2009, 7:17pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Maintenance

    Number of comments: 8
    The brush moves back and forth as if under its own power after a while. Painting is a kind of hypnotic therapy driven by nothing more stimulating the porch rail becoming a little bit brighter. The Canadian Pacific grey soot slowly becomes white and shiny, new and clean. Years of [...]
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    Posted: September 13, 2009, 7:48pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Digital Paperboy

    Number of comments: 9
    How much would you pay to read your favorite newspaper online?  If the answer is nothing, because that’s what you’re paying now, you’re not alone.  But 170 dailies are agonizing over how to make you pay for their craft in a semi-public way that we are just beginning to learn [...]
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    Posted: September 10, 2009, 9:23pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • At Yer Feet

    Number of comments: 7
    When people talk about the economy, whether on talk shows or in bars or just standing at the bus stop, the conversation eventually goes the same way.  Everyone has a theory about who is to blame, where the money went, or at least how this might play out in the [...]
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    Posted: September 08, 2009, 10:00pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Jim Crowing

    Number of comments: 10
    When the going gets strange, the strange get going. Politics always has its share of irrational arguments, but a barrage of the bizarre often establishes a pattern.  If you’ve seen it before, experience kicks in to tell you that it’s a much bigger argument than you might have otherwise thought.  [...]
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    Posted: September 06, 2009, 8:23pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Labor Day

    Number of comments: 3
    Monday is what we call a “holiday”, the word rooted in “Holy Day” or, at the very least, a day of celebration.  It’s one of the lost days of our calendar in the sense that very few people seem to understand that Labor Day was a day meant to celebrate [...]
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    Posted: September 03, 2009, 8:33pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Unheeded

    Number of comments: 4
    Perhaps it’s just the waning warmth of summer closing around me like a blanket on a fall day, but I’ve had a feeling lately.  Events have conspired to make me think about the long term perspective on what is going on in our world, the bigger picture that I like [...]
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    Posted: September 01, 2009, 7:01pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Jefferson versus Hamilton

    Number of comments: 5
    I use Barataria to throw out a few ideas and new perspectives that I’m not entirely sure of myself.  I hope you see this as a way of thinking out loud.  Difficult social topics are rarely settled in one person’s mind, no matter how much they are mulled over.  I [...]
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    Posted: August 30, 2009, 9:37pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Awfully Artificial

    Number of comments: 7
    Words mean things, or so the saying goes.  Unfortunately, things change so words have to change.  That’s where it gets interesting. English is an adaptable language that mutates easily.  The problem is that language is useful for both communication and identity, so people sometimes deliberately use a word in a different [...]
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    Posted: August 27, 2009, 9:07pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Sixteen Tons

    Number of comments: 7
    I have proposed that understanding the connections that make up a system give us a greater insight into how that system will respond to the stresses of change than any kind of institutional or academic perspective.  My readers have responded by demanding specific examples, so I thought I’d start with [...]
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    Posted: August 25, 2009, 8:40pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Platform

    Number of comments: 10
    What are we gonna do?  If you read those of us who kvetch constantly about not just what’s wrong but exactly what’s wrong you probably get a kind of fatigue after a while.  That’s understandable.  I strongly believe that if you are in the business of pointing out the bad [...]
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    Posted: August 23, 2009, 8:34pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Baratariana

    Number of comments: 3
    In the two years I’ve been writing Barataria, I’ve taken one sick day and one vacation day off from a MWF schedule.  I’m proud of that record, but with my parents in town and a potential new business opportunity starting to fill my thoughts there wasn’t much room left for [...]
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    Posted: August 21, 2009, 9:39am EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • A Matter of Priority

    Number of comments: 15
    If you’re trying to keep track of the money spent by our Federal Government for “stimulus”, you must know that it’s not easy.  CNN has a guide that I’ve found handy that tells me the Government has committed to $1.9 Trillion (With a capital T) and the Federal Reserve about [...]
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    Posted: August 18, 2009, 8:02pm EDT
    by wabbitoid

  • Systemic Connections: Conclusion

    Number of comments: 16
    We live in a time that seems to rarely be bounded by what we know.  All around us are what appears to be an unlimited number of new scientific facts and imaginative ideas.  Yet with all of the great products of our minds, we live in uncertain times.  Great theories [...]
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    Posted: August 16, 2009, 7:01pm EDT
    by wabbitoid
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