Tom McMahon

The Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota, Formerly The Rochester State Hospital: Home of Many Famous Incarcerated Celebrities. And I Used To Live Across The Street From It.

2009-07-06T07:50:30-05:00

The Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota, Formerly The Rochester State Hospital: Home of Many Famous Incarcerated Celebrities. And I Used To Live Across The Street From It.

It's been the home away from home for televangelist Jim Bakker, perennial presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, Sotheby's chairman A. Alfred Taubman, and may soon be the home of Bernie Madoff. Up the road 100 miles or so from where ex-Enron CEO Jeff Skilling spends his time these days.

When we lived there in the late seventies it was still the Rochester State Hospital. And yes, we literally lived across the street, in the Edelweiss Apartments. Those old state hospitals have a lot of mysterious history.

Mayo Clinic Ash Tray

2009-07-05T22:40:15-05:00

Mayo Clinic Ash Tray

Times were different then.

Sharks in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota?

2009-07-05T20:23:45-05:00

It starts with recent reports of sharks in the swamps of Louisiana:

Walker has pictures of bull sharks that were caught among the inland waters in Louisiana. He says sharks have likely been around these parts for decades. However, they're noticing them more because they now take huge samples of species in different waterways in Louisiana and that's turning up sharks. It's no surprise for long time Atchafalaya swamp tour guide Curtis Allemond. "Oh, I used to catch 'em up on the river when the river's low, yeah (laughs)," he said when asked if he had ever seen any sharks in the swamp.
The bull shark is particularly troubling for Walker, in part due to their natural threatening nature. "They're fairly aggressive sharks. They're probably responsible for the majority of the attacks on human beings." Walker says there are no known inland shark attacks in Louisiana. The bull sharks are not just hanging around the bayous and swamps. They have been caught some 900 miles up the Mississippi River.
"They have been captured in St. Louis. They have traveled 2500 miles up the Amazon. They have some mechanism in their make-up that allows them to process freshwater and not require high salinity to live." It may seem hard to believe that in the deep swamp of Louisiana bull sharks, one of the most dangerous species of shark, are swimming in the swamp.

That "St. Louis shark" was actually caught upriver in Alton, Illinois:

According to the Illinois Department of Conservation, two commercial fishermen from Alton, Herbert Cope and Dudge Collins, caught a bull shark in 1937. They found something troubling their wood and mesh traps late that summer. Concluding that it was a fish, they built a strong wire trap and baited it with chicken guts.

The next morning, they caught a 5-foot 84-pound shark, which they displayed in the Calhoun Fish Market where it attracted crowds for days. Although some folks suspected a hoax, the catch was considered authentic. Biologists later concluded from photos that it was a bull shark. Recently, Clint Smith of Alton supplied an old photo of the catch, with the present-day ADM flourmill in the background.
Bull sharks can live a long time in freshwater. In 1972, one was caught 2,500 miles up the Amazon. The journey from New Orleans to Alton is about 1,750 miles. Dams now prevent sharks from entering Illinois.

Bull Shark in Alton, Illinois in 1937

Another story:

Minneapolis, MN -- Shortly after Jaws opened in Minneapolis theatres back in the summer of 1975, the number of swimmers using our area lakes and pools plunged significantly. So, when a 10 year-old Minneapolis student approached Minnesota DNR biologist Dan Marais about three fossilized shark's teeth she had found in Minnehaha Creek, he could only smile to himself. More shark tales, he thought. That is, until he actually saw the teeth.
They did, in fact, come from sharks. However, two of the specimens were clearly not fossils, but teeth shed from a contemporary shark. Curious about the origins, Marais called a colleague at the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife to help identify the teeth and perhaps avoid falling victim to a hoax. What he learned made the small hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year, a report by Gulf marine scientists had warned that the enormous amount of pollution back-flushed into the Gulf of Mexico would cause many species of marine animals to either relocate or perish. That expected decimation of the food chain led to warnings of a possible migration of coastal sharks into rivers where a higher oxygen content would support more aquatic life. Specifically, they were watching for the common Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas). The stuff of legends, this aggressive shark was already known for its ability to live, feed, and even breed in extremely shallow fresh waters. Bull Sharks had previously been documented as far north as the Ohio River. They have also been attributed to most of the attacks on humans worldwide.
Lab technicians positively identified these two teeth as having come from a two-to-three year-old Bull Shark. However, it was a semi-classified document dated February 12, 2006 from the Wisconsin DNR that really set the wheels in motion. On that date, ice-diving biologists captured a nearly comatose five-foot Bull Shark in Lake Pepin, a widening of the Mississippi River. They were responding to reports from several startled salvage divers of a sleeping, "shark-like fish" in the open cab of a pickup truck that had gone through the ice a few weeks earlier. The Wisconsin divers located the truck in approximately 18' of water with the shark still inside, apparently hiding from the swift current. But the cold water had slowed its respiration and metabolism so much that it was barely alive. After an examination, the fish was tagged with a radio location device and released back into the river (Wisconsin regulations do not allow the keeping or transport of live, non-game fish). Sadly, marine biologists doubt the fish will survive until summer without the needed quantity of minerals and trace elements found in saltwater.

Bull Shark Caught In Lake Pepin

Frankly I'm not sure which is scarier: The sharks themselves or the fact that "Jaws" kept eligible voters out of swimming pools.

More stuff here, here, and here if you're interested.

Volkwagen Thing On The Price Is Right, Circa 1973

2009-07-03T12:06:32-05:00

Volkwagen Thing On The Price Is Right, Circa 1973

What If George W. Bush Had ...

2009-07-02T15:33:04-05:00

What If George W. Bush had ...

made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky?
If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the non-existent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?
If George W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current on their income taxes, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to “Cinco de Cuatro” in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the Fifth of May (Cinco de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again, would you have winced in embarrassment?
If George W. Bush had misspelled the word advice would you have hammered him for it for years like Dan Quayle and potato as “proof” of what a dunce he is?
If George W. Bush had burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on “Earth Day”, would you have concluded he’s a hypocrite?
If George W. Bush’s administration had okayed Air Force One flying low over millions of people followed by a jet fighter in downtown Manhattan causing widespread panic, would you have wondered whether they actually “get” what happened on 9-11?
If George W. Bush had been the first President to need a teleprompter installed to be able to get through a press conference, would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how he is inept he is on his own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes?
If George W. Bush had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in New Orleans, would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue with claims of racism and incompetence?
If George W. Bush had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had proposed to double the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?
So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive? Can't think of anything? Don't worry. He's done all this in 10 weeks -- so you'll have three years and nine-and-a-half months to come up with an answer.

from Grouchy Old Cripple

New Tab

2009-07-02T13:00:06-05:00

New Tab

Radio Hall of Fame Nominees

2009-07-02T12:38:09-05:00

These are just the ones in the National - Pioneer category:

Dr. Demento – the program created by Barret Hansen in 1970 that developed a cult following with its trend setting collection of novelty songs and comedy skits.
Dick Orkin – the award-winning voice actor known for his humorous commercials and the man who created the comedy serial "Chickenman", which satirized the TV show "Batman."
Suspense - the CBS program was "Radio's Outstanding Theater of Thrills" for over 20 years. The devotion to suspense over horror allowed the show to go in directions that no other show could go.
WLS Barn Dance – the program debuted on April 19, 1924 on powerhouse WLS/Chicago’s first day on air and became an instant hit, introducing country music to the masses with a heavy dose of down-home comedy.

IMHO, they all belong in the Radio HOF. (via Christine Miller's terrific Escape and Suspense blog)

Irony For The Kids

2009-07-02T11:50:48-05:00

Irony For The Kids

Official 1840 U.S. Census Statistics "Proved" That Freedom Was Bad For Black Slaves

2009-07-01T21:24:53-05:00

Clayton Cramer explains:

In my book Black Demographic Data, 1790-1860, I devote a chapter to discussing how the 1840 census data was used to prove that free blacks were more likely to be "insane or idiot" or disabled the further north you went in the U.S.--and partisans of slavery used the data to prove that freedom was bad for slaves, based on this data.
While it does appear that there was actually an increase in physically disabled free blacks just north of the border, it was not because freedom was bad for blacks. It appears that the reason was that slave owners would dump disabled slaves across the border as a way of getting rid of slaves that they would otherwise have to support. (They could not free a slave in their home state without legislative permission, and this would not be granted if the goal was to dump a disabled slave onto the county poorhouse.)
All sorts of dark conspiracies were imagined for a very long time to explain how the 1840 census data ended up with these astonishing numbers--but Patricia Cline Cohen's A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America contains what I consider by far the most satisfying explanation--miscoding errors. The column for "idiot and insane" whites was right next to the "idiot and insane" column for blacks--and these columns were very, very long. It was therefore very easy for census marshals to accidentally enter the "idiot and insane white" count in the "idiot and insane Negro" column. Especially the further north you went, the fewer blacks there were in the population--so even moving one or two mentally disabled whites into the back column would have very disproportionate influence: the mentally ill and retarded whites who might be 1% of the white population in a small town magically became 10% of the black population.