Yes, well, Heather MacDonald was educated at Yale, Cambridge, and Stanford. Why wouldn’t she be an elitist who looks down her nose at moose hunting?

see-dubya on September 20, 2008 at 10:42 PM

My life story is why this woman is beneath contempt.

I grew up in Wyoming in the 1950s/1960s in a town of 5000 people within 10 miles of a WWII Japanese internment camp . Population density at that time was 3 persons per square mile (~300,000 humans and ~100,000 square miles of land). I was taught how to shoot a six-shooter as an 8 year old, and I know how to use a hunting rifle. My family subsisted off of wild game for years. Every year, my brothers and I, along with my father, shot an elk (wapiti) and one or more dear for meat. There were some years when we even got a moose. I drew the line at bear (yuck, I wouldn’t eat it). We had SO much wild game, my father bought the refrigeration unit off of a wrecked truck, and he built a 10 foot by 10 foot walk-in freezer off of the garage. Some years, if we had less than adequate hunting luck, we bought a side of beef from one of my uncles. We did all of the dressing, skinning, curing, and butchering ouselves. It was nasty hard work.

I grew up. I attended the University of Wyoming. I graduated magna cum laude with a BSME. I was the UW’s top graduate in my discipline that year (highest GPA).

Within a month, I attended Purdue University. The Big 10 graduates laughed at me (because I was from such a primitive place — Wyoming after all). I know for a fact that I was the ONLY Wyoming native in attendance that year at Purdue because it was published in the student newspaper (more reason to laugh at me). Eighteen months later, they weren’t laughing anymore. I had written a 200+ page Master’s Thesis and I had outscored my classmates on many of the final exams. I graduated magna cum laude with an MSME. I was 23 years old. Time to go to work.

I took the lowest paying job offer I had, and went to work for NASA. I worked there nearly 3 years, before the agency sent me to school at Stanford University to study for my Ph.D. in Aeronautical Engineering. I completed the course work in 19 months — nearly twice as many coursework hours as was required for the degree. Seventeen people took the qualifying exams that year. Only five of us passed. I received the top score. I returned to NASA and wrote my 300+ page disseration in absentia. I returned to Stanford 16 months later to review the first draft with my advisor. He told me that it was the finest first draft he had ever ever seen. We worked to enhance it. Four months later I gave my presentation (defense). One of the professors on my committee (not my advisor) told me that it was the finest dissertation defense that he had ever seen. Again, I graduated magna cum laude with my Ph.D. in Aeronautics/Astronautics.

After seven years with NASA, I ended my government service (leaving the agency) and headed for the left coast (Seattle) to work for a well known aerospace giant. I’ve been here for the past 21 years without being laid off (a miracle in its own right).

Throughout my life, I’ve run into the snooty Heather McDonalds of the world. As near as I can tell, every d*mn one of them has been as empty, and as unethical as Barack Obama. They are like beta males trying to over-compensate. Not one has ever been able to out-think me, out-work me, out-produce me, or intimidate me. (It helps that I am over six feet tall and 240 pounds.)

That doesn’t mean that I’ve gone though life unscathed. I’ve suffered plenty of damage because of their lies, treachery, and sabotage. They will never win, though, because they simply don’t understand that I am not playing by the same rules. Like Sarah Palin, I grew up in a Bible believing church. (That’s right. I’m a gun slinging, Bible totin’, not-so-bitter clinger.) The only way that they can beat me, is if I let them. Only if I let them turn me into an angry, hate filled, venom spewing loser like themselves, will they win. It ain’t gonna’ happen. I know my Bible, and I heed the warnings about “guarding my heart.”

Besides. I have a talking dog.

My collie says:

Do I need to remind everyone of what Mother Teresa said? :

“People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway. If you are successful you will win some false friends and true enemies; Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you’ve got anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; It was never about them anyway.”

Did I mention that he’s a pretty doggone smart collie?

CyberCipher on September 21, 2008 at 2:05 PM