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The real are you my mother?

In 1956, the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” hit the silver screen. Seed pods from outer space landed on Earth. If a pod were placed near a sleeping person, a visually identical copy of that person would be produced, and only the copy would be left. Each copy had the original person’s personality and memory, but no human emotion. When a parent duplicate was made, for example, the children were sure that the copies were not the real parent. A psychological problem that very much resembles the movie is called Capgras Syndrome. A person with Capgras Syndrome will believe that ...

Wondering about God’s plan

I wrote this in November 2023. On advice of attorney, I didn’t submit it then. Both drivers were beat up, but we recovered. All the equipment was totaled. We finished combining corn the last week of October. Then it was a rush to do tillage because you never know when winter is coming. It was going well, with a few monkey wrenches at the end. When I finished ripping the last cornfield Nov. 10, I was feeling good about the world. It was around noon that I was coming home on Highway 14 like I’ve done a thousand times before. I was thinking that Pam and I should celebrate. ...

What is a good plan?

A simple definition of planning is thinking about what you have to do to accomplish your goal. It involves future thinking. Psychologists have tried to break down this type of thinking from a variety of perspectives. One view is that it is a process of formulating, evaluating, and selecting a sequence of thoughts and actions that hopefully will lead to the goal. Another perspective is that planning is a deliberate, mental organization of actions that are oriented toward a goal. Yet another perspective is that planning involves being conscientious, orderly, and meticulous, then ...

Free health care for illegal immigrants: At what cost to Minnesotans?

A concerned constituent recently sent me a text message regarding the escalating cost of providing medical care to illegal immigrants in the State of Minnesota. Here’s what’s currently in place: In the 2023 Health and Human Services budget bill, illegal immigrants were granted free coverage under MinnesotaCare. The estimated cost for this over the next four years is $220 million, and the number of estimated enrollees was just over 5,000 individuals. Alarmingly, in the first three months of enrollment, over 17,000 individuals qualified, more than three times the original ...

A day at the circus

It was a rainy, gloomy spring day that didn’t seem good for much of anything. My wife turned to me and asked, “Would you like to do something different?” “I’ll try anything once!” I replied eagerly. And so, we went to see a circus. This is hard to admit, but I had never attended a circus. During my first 40-some years, working on my family’s dairy farm kept me far too busy for such falderol. Then I spent more than two decades working as a newspaper writer and ad salesman, a job that consumed most of my bandwidth. My wife and I have now reached the WC stage of life, ...

No sense in protecting claim sharks

The Minnesota Commanders’ Task Force — a collaboration of The American Legion, AMVETS, DAV, JWV, Marine Corps League, MOPH, PVA and VFW — calls on Minnesota state lawmakers to pass the anti-fraud measures to stop claim sharks taking advantage of our veterans. The time is now. Our veteran service officers across the state and at the federal building at Fort Snelling see claim sharks take advantage of our veterans over and over and over. Claim sharking is a classic numbers game. The sharks typically work under the name of an important-sounding consulting company with the word ...