In many of my blog posts, I write about ignorance, backwardness, lack of education, and hatred of educated people in Dickinson, North Dakota.  In this blog post, I will give some specific examples.  Some readers may ask, what is my point?, why even bother?  I try to write about what living in Dickinson, North Dakota is like.  It is difficult, tiring, frustrating, and miserable to try to communicate, converse, accomplish things, and complete work when local Dickinson people don’t understand, can’t understand, won’t understand, and refuse to understand proven facts, mathematics, mechanics, and engineering.

• I was trying to explain tire sizes to a local Dickinson man.  I gave some examples, a typical 235/75 R15 tire, is a tire that is 235 milimeters wide across the face of its tread, the 75 is the aspect ratio, it is the ratio of the the height of the tire to the width of the tire, 0.75.  The R15 is the wheel size.  The Dickinson man could understand the wheel size, such as R15, R16 etc., but no matter how many times I explained, wrote out the mathematical formula, printed out the explanation and formula from a tire manufacturer, he kept insisting that a 235/75 R15 tire was narrower than a 235/75 R16 tire.  Finally, I made a fixed solid template that was exactly 235 mm wide and went to all the different 235/75 tires to show him the tire width is the same.  This Dickinson man was so stubborn, he absolutely refused to look at the fixed template being put on all the tires, and continued to insist that the tire width changes.  I handed him the template to see for himself, and he would not use it even though all the tires were twenty feet away.

• I was trying to explain to a local Dickinson man, that some vehicles like Mercedes, BMW, Subaru, and Toyota have all time four wheel drive, or all time all wheel drive.  You can not allow a tow truck to pick up one end of these vehicles and tow it with the other two wheels on the ground, because it will break the linkage in the transfer case.  I read a service bulletin to him, and I handed him the printed out service bulletin, that explains if you tow a Jeep Grand Cherokee Quadratrack or a Toyota LandCruiser even ten feet with two wheels remaining on the ground, it breaks a chain linkage in the Jeep transfer case, and it breaks a viscous coupler in the Toyota transfer case.  The Dickinson resident refused to believe, and continued to deny, that there was any other possible transfer case connection other than gear to gear, and that Mercedes, BMW, Subaru, Toyota all time four wheel drive or all time all wheel drive was the same as Ford and Chevrolet four wheel drive trucks.

• I was asking a local Dickinson man if his flat bed, double axle trailer had trailer brakes because he was talking about loading it with 12,000 lbs.  He said that he had disconnected and removed the trailer brakes.  I was talking to him about an electric brake controller, and that most full size trucks have an under dashboard plug to connect an electric brake controller.  The local Dickinson man said to me, “Electric brake controllers are only good in a few situations.”  I then knew that he had a serious misconception about electric brake controllers, thinking that you had to physically pull a lever every time to apply the trailer brakes.  I explained to him, that back in the 1990s my Ford F150 and my Dodge 1500 both had a plug for an electric brake controller under the dashboard.  I bought an electric brake controller for each truck.  When you put your foot on the brake pedal, the electric brake controller light comes on in intensity related to how hard you press the brake pedal, and it sends the brake signal to the trailer brakes, it is automatic, you don’t have to pull a hand lever.  The Dickinson man refused to believe me, he thinks that there is no such thing, even though electric brake controllers have been like this for at least the past thirty years.

• I was asking this local Dickinson man why he wanted to load his trailer with 12,000 lbs.  He said, “With two 3,500 lb axles, you should be able to load a trailer with 12,000 lbs.”  Two 3,500 lb axles would give you a load limit of 7,000 lbs, minus the weight of the trailer, which I tried to explain to him, which he didn’t want to hear.

• The longest time employee at an oil field service company in Dickinson had been driving the same bucket truck for ten years.  This employee got a shop jack, placed it under the truck, had to get a wood block spacer, and began jacking up the rear of the truck to remove the rear wheel to work on the leaf springs.  I did not want him working under the truck with it only supported by the shop jack, so I got some railroad tie blocks to put under the rear of the truck.  Then it occurred to me, there are rear hydraulic outrigger stabilizers that get lowered down about ten times each day that completely lift the rear end and rear wheels off the ground, why are we using a shop jack with a wood block spacer to lift the rear of the truck off the ground?  This employee has lifted the rear of this truck and rear wheels off the ground ten times each day, for the past ten years, with this truck’s own hydraulic outriggers, why didn’t this occur to him?

Above I gave some simple clear examples of being frustrated by people in Dickinson, North Dakota.  The frustration comes in part from the people not knowing, then more frustration comes when they don’t know that they don’t know, and the most frustration comes when you can’t convince them with documentation and proof.

Many things are harder to see, know, understand, and explain than the simple clear examples that I gave above.  The examples that I gave above dealt with physical mechanical things that you can see, name, point to, and touch.  Living and working in Dickinson, North Dakota involves inter-relation between economics, business, politics, religion, culture, values, and ethics.  Now that I think about it, what I have been doing in most of my other blog posts is expressing frustration and explaining the ignorance in economics, business, religion, culture, values, and ethics in Dickinson, North Dakota.

To answer your question real quick, what ignorance?:  Raising rent and housing prices 400% to 500%;  collusion in creating a housing shortage and high housing prices;  mistreatment of out of state workers;  Catholic Church teaching and fostering hatred, hostility, usury, lack of cooperation, and unfriendliness;  holding people down by keeping them uneducated and teaching them to hate education and educated people.