The life and times of a normal university student

26 September 2011

Sixty Third Post — North Dakota

Have I ever talked about my internship?
Well, I had one my senior year of high school. There were a bunch of us at the national lab in the area, and we had to meet up for "enrichment sessions" that meant that we got paid to sit around and talk about our work with people who had no idea what we were talking about while thinking about the thing that we left in the plate reader, or oven, or other experimental medium.
They were a hoot.
A lot of times, the leader would be late or be called away, so we would end up talking about random things that had no relationship to our labs. Things like state capitols.
Out of 20 interns, all high school seniors, all smart enough to get teachers to write them the recommendation letters, most in several AP classes, at least two destined to speak at their graduations, not one knew North Dakota's capitol.
We showed our true colours as future engineers and surgeons by deciding that North Dakota therefore does not actually exist.
I adopted this as my pet conspiracy theory. National monuments, landmarks, forests? Mount Rushmore is in South Dakota. Little House on the Prairie's later books? Set in South Dakota.
Yup. North Dakota is actually not there. I have yet to work out why the government has perpetrated this lie, but I think it has to do with secret stuff on the Canadian border, like Area 51-status stuff. In fact, my uncle was stationed there with the Air Force. Uh huh. That's right. He's part of the cover-up.
Then the TA for my Karate class had been to North Dakota. Damn. However, the account of just one witness does not count.
Then I found this video (you don't have to watch it if you don't want to, just read the title and the description and maybe watch a few seconds or so of it to get the gist).
Goddamn it. That's two witnesses, one with video evidence.
Sigh. I guess I'm just not cut out to be a conspiracy theorist.
Unless... maybe they're all in on it...