Happy Memorial Day

Good morning,

Whitewater’s forecast calls for a chance of scattered thunderstorms giving way to a mostly sunny day, with a high of seventy-nine.

Whitewater’s Memorial Day Parade will begin at 10:30 a.m. at First Citizens Bank in downtown Whitewater, and take a route ending at American Legion post 173, at 272 Wisconsin Street.

Map and route diagram from Google Maps. Map is clickable for a larger image.

The Wisconsin Historical Society recalls a fateful second meeting in 1989:

1899 – Gideons Get Going

On this night two salesmen, John H. Nicholson and Samuel E. Hill, crossed paths a second time, in Beaver Dam. The pair had first met eight months before in the Central Hotel in Boscobel and discussed the need for some way to provide Christian support to traveling businessmen. During this second meeting in Beaver Dam the two decided to “get right at it. Start the ball rolling and follow it up.”

They invited their professional contacts to an organizational meeting to be held in Janesville on July 1, 1899, at which the organization was formally named and chartered. By 1948, The Gideons had distributed over 15 million bibles world-wide. View more information about the founding of the Gideons elsewhere at wisconsinhistory.org [Source: Wisconsin Local History & Biography Articles]

Omaha Beach as seen from the top of the footpath leading down from the Normandy American Cemetery above the beach.

Date of photograph: May 2, 2000
Photographer: Anthony Atkielski (Agateller)
Released to public domain

Truth, justice and DNA http://bit.ly/d6IXOC
about 6 hours ago via bit.ly

Rep. Pedro Colon says he is applying for Milwaukee Sewerage District job – the perfect job for him – JSOnline http://bit.ly/bbAQmq
about 19 hours ago via bit.ly

Brat Fest sets a record on its first day http://bit.ly/clfCDG
about 22 hours ago via bit.ly

RT @IJ: Institute for Justice is taking its 4th case to the Supreme Court in eight years! Learn more here: http://iam.ij.org/bSvtqg
2:10 PM May 28th via Seesmic

IJ What would you do if your town made it illegal to sell produce on your own farm? File a federal lawsuit! http://iam.ij.org/aLini6
9:14 AM May 27th via Seesmic

A politician who supports everything supports nothing Yet, it cannot be true that he’d support everything, as personal ambition beckons
4:30 PM May 26th via Seesmic

Sick Pig Watch: http://bit.ly/dzFo4A
3:13 PM May 26th via Seesmic

English socialists decry faceless free market Better than face-to-face, behind-the-back bias of politcians/bureaucrats http://bit.ly/c1XbRJ
2:51 PM May 26th via Seesmic

No large municipal project should be taxpayer funded unless city leaders put 10% of their personal wealth into the project
1:46 PM May 26th via Seesmic

Cato: We’re working hard to spread liberty throughout the world. “Libertarianism: A Primer” now in 15 languages http://bit.ly/dapuFX
1:39 PM May 26th via Seesmic

Cato: Want to skip the chatter and read an honest legal assessment of Arizona’s immigration law? Look no further – http://bit.ly/aGMrFX
11:18 AM May 26th via Seesmic

RT @CatoInstitute: When Will the Eurozone Collapse? http://bit.ly/96n2Ug #tlot The plans mice and men…
10:59 AM May 26th via Seesmic

Asset Forfeiture Fact: Forfeiture $ was used to fund a DA’s re-election campaign. More outrageous examples here: http://iam.ij.org/9Ml7wR
10:57 AM May 26th via Seesmic

Criticism is powerful through its underlying truth, a truth that erodes everything before it
1:23 PM May 25th via Seesmic

Criticism of municipal politics doesn’t alter a city’s future; the reason for criticism (the foolishness of city policies) seals her fate
1:20 PM May 25th via Seesmic

Whitewater, Wisconsin’s local government is convinced that it can, and should, pick winners Yet, for it all, the city lags her neighbors
1:11 PM May 25th via Seesmic

The case for free markets http://bit.ly/bGDZPL
1:08 PM May 25th via Seesmic

2008 Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr spoke to this weekend’s 2010 LP Convention. He posted his address online at his website.

Here are excerpts from his address:

Keynote Address Before The National Convention of the Libertarian Party
Delivered By Bob Barr, 2008 Libertarian Party Nominee for President of the United States
At St. Louis, Missouri On Saturday, May 29, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010 at 2:30 PM

Fellow Libertarians, it is an honor to stand before you today, in 2010, as I did two years ago in accepting the Libertarian Party nomination for President of the United States. In these past two years, many of the consequences which we predicted in 2008 would befall America in the absence of Libertarian Party leadership, have in fact occurred. America’s national debt has ballooned to record and dangerous levels; government spending has risen to levels for which the term “irresponsible” fails to adequately convey the magnitude thereof; our civil liberties, supposed to be guaranteed against government encroachment in our Bill of Rights, continue to be diminished; property rights, understood by us as a fundamental underpinning of a free society, today remain naked in the face of government power; and the sanctity of the right to contract enjoys even less currency today than it did in 2008….

The privileges or immunities clause in the 14th Amendment – intended to protect fundamental rights such as the right to keep and bear arms, belonging to all free men – was artificially and dramatically weakened by an intellectually vapid Supreme Court in 1873’s Slaughterhouse Cases decision. (And there remain to this day justices in that body who pay hollow allegiance to that liberty-debilitating decision.)….

Each time economic rights and powers are taken from the American people, whether by the “Square Deal,” “New Deal,” or the “Great Society,” Atlas’ knees bend a little bit more. Every program that sucks vitality from free enterprise, and which steals from the American people the fruits of their labor, causes the ground to shift beneath Atlas, making it harder still for him to stand and bear the weight of free men on his shoulders….

Relevant Libertarianism means articulating a message using words comprehensible to others who may not be steeped in our movement’s work. What is Relevant Libertarianism?

Relevant Libertarianism tells America’s business – small and large — that their long years of having the regulatory and tax tails of the dog dictate their entire business plan need no longer continue.

Relevant Libertarianism shows American families that control of the education of their children will be once again placed in their hands, not those of government bureaucrats.

Relevant Libertarianism indicates unequivocally that decisions between a patient and a doctor are made between the patient and the doctor, without the intervening and arbitrary filter of so-called “government health care” bureaucrats or, even worse, the IRS.

Relevant Libertarianism promises America’s taxpayers that the country’s oppressive, complex, unfair and unfathomable tax system must and will be dismantled – not all at once or overnight, but that at least the process of dismantling it will begin.

Relevant Libertarianism reminds voters that they can at long last have a real voice for real change in our country’s political present and future.

Relevant Libertarianism clarifies that our system of criminal laws and procedures, which continues to grow and manifest itself far, far beyond those laws that are necessary or even reasonable for a free and ordered society, will be fundamentally reevaluated and reconstituted so as to protect liberty rather than stifling and taking liberty a criminal law “Grace Commission,” so to speak).

Relevant Libertarianism ensures that those laws on the books that are necessary and reasonable to ensure freedom, liberty and a fair and open economic system, are actually enforced consistently and appropriately; and not by creating massive, oppressive, and intrusive regulatory structures every time there is a problem within a particular sector of our economy.

Relevant Libertarianism shouts loud and clear across the land that the days of the Nanny State are over and the re-dawning of the Freedom State are again within the grasp of the American people.

These messages, which already resonate in the hearts of the vast majority of Americans, must be articulated by us through a short, clear and precise platform and agenda that is unequivocal in its enunciation of real-life political freedom. The message must be brought to individuals, businesses and communities across the country by candidates who are articulate and who can and will relate to real-life voters and businesspeople….

Our work will be his hope – America’s hope – for a real rebirth of Liberty in the real world. This is our challenge; this is America’s challenge. If we fail, America fails; and the world will be a far colder, darker place for generations to come. We cannot allow that to happen. Let us commit here, in two thousand and ten — in the year of America’s independence the two-hundred and thirty-fourth – that the Libertarian Party will at long last meet its true potential and destiny in the real world; for real, living Freedom….

2010 LP Convention Remarks of Bob Barr.

There are many inspirational videos available online, but few more so than one of the entries to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s “I am Free Enterprise” video contest. A video about small-business owner Tracy Foster, who makes a line of stylish camera bags, is now a finalist in the Chamber’s contest. (I wrote about the contest and another excellent entry, A Delicious Free Enterprise Contest Entry, earlier this week.)

Here’s the entry describing Foster’s business, entitled, “Tracy Foster is Free Enterprise.”

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmTJ3lvvF-w.

Readers intrigued about Foster’s products can visit the Facebook page of Ona Bags, at http://www.facebook.com/onabags.

In this video, one sees the bright future of America as a free and productive place, the hope of so many people, on this continent, and far beyond.

Secretary of State Clinton recently said that productive Americans, among others in the developed world, don’t pay their fair share of taxes. (Clinton offered that observation at the Brookings Institution earlier this week. Clinton was quick to say that she was not speaking for the administration of which she is, after all, a Senate-confirmed cabinet secretary.)

She’s wrong. Prosperous Americans pay huge amounts of their earnings into the federal treasury each year. Reason describes the real state of taxation in America, in a short, informative video. Here’s the caption that accompanies Reason.tv‘s film:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently said that “the rich are not paying their fair share” of taxes in the United States and other developed countries.

Is she right? It depends on what you consider fair. Using 2006 data, The New York Times found that the richest 20 percent of households were paying 26 percent of their income to the federal government in the form of income, payroll, corporate, and excise taxes. The average for all families? 21 percent.

And there’s this: “In 2006, the top quintile of households earned 55.7 percent of pretax income and paid 69.3 percent of federal taxes, while the top 1 percent of households earned 18.8 percent of income and paid 28.3 percent of taxes.”

Paying in a lot more than you get out? That doesn’t seem fair.

The rich are different than you and me; they’ve got more money. And they pay more taxes.

Politicians are different too–they rarely say what they really mean. Perhaps what Secretary Clinton means is that the rich can always pay more than they’re already paying.

That would explain why she and the president are lobbying to let the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year, a policy that would raise all sorts of taxes on all sorts of people.

Which doesn’t sound all that fair either.

Produced by Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie.

Go here for documentation and graphs.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wzg0dGrfP60

Almost everyone in American who is burdened of politics knows what a fuss Rand Paul, a senate candidate from Kentucky, raised through his remarks on the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Paul and his father are libertarians, but also candidates of the Republican party. The left has made great sport of the younger Paul’s remarks, not simply as his remarks, but as an attack on libertarian philosophy itself.

There have been many prominent defenses of this venerable political view, one worthily and easily defended. Terry Michael’s “In Defense of Libertarianism” in Reason is one of them.

I’ve had a commenter write twice to mention Ron Paul. (I assume it’s the same commenter, writing two posts, a week apart.) He’s not shown up this week, but then it’s a holiday.

Michael styles his defense as an open letter to the left, part of which appears below:

To my left-liberal Democrat friends:

As you engage in intellectual dishonesty using Rand Paul’s silly comments on the 1964 Civil Rights Act to misrepresent libertarianism, perhaps you might want to consider a little history of the political philosophy of the founder of our party, Thomas Jefferson, the original libertarian. Let me help you escape your ignorance about libertarianism without a capital L, a political philosophy far from conservatism….

Classical liberalism, on the other hand, has lasted centuries. It was a natural fit for an Agrarian Era, with self-sustaining farmers, frontiersmen, and shop keepers. When the Industrial Era arrived, these individualists railed against “wage labor.” They wanted no part of centralized industry and its abuses. Corporate excesses fed Progressive Era reformers, who promoted one-size-fits-all government to address the sins of the Robber Barons.

With adoption of the income tax and world wars, a depression, and a big tax-paying middle class after World War II, Big Government was in full bloom by the 1960s, complete with a tax-hungry Cold War military industrial complex, entitlement programs that devoured revenue, and government dependency by both an impoverished underclass and a corporate welfare class.

Then came the push-back that brought Ronald Reagan to power….

Concurrent with abandonment of the New Deal and Great Society by large blocks of voters, there arrived the third great economic wave, the Information Age, which intellectually empowers individuals, allowing them to enjoy more control over their own economic lives….

Of course, Rand Paul was ridiculous questioning four-decade-old settled law that recognized slavery and segregation as conditions justifying the coercive power of the state to prohibit discrimination. We libertarians could give you a long list of things, like fighting crime and enforcing contracts, we regard as appropriate for state intrusion. We just insist the use of government power be minimal, consistent with individual liberty and responsibility.

I’d agree.

I’ll write more about Rand Paul’s remarks over the weekend.

American ingenuity. When asked why he did it, Jonathon Trappe replied,

Didn’t you ever have this dream, grabbing on to a bunch of toy balloons and floating off?

Wonderful and admirable.

See, American Crosses English Channel with Helium Balloons

Since early May, U.S. Census takers have been visiting homes across America, as part of a Nonresponse Follow-up. They’ve probably visited quite a few homes in our area by now, and their work may continue through July (nationally, at least). I’ve written about the census before, and have a link in support of this effort on the left side of this website.

(See, Wisconsin State Journal: Local [Dane County] Officials Concerned Hispanic Immigrants Will Avoid Census: “Although civil libertarians often oppose some of the questions as too intrusive, I support the efforts of the census for Whitewater, particularly.”)

The Census Bureau’s issued a release with information about the visits of census takers. In every case, census takers should be greeted respectfully and cooperatively.

Here’s information the Bureau has included in a recent press release:

The Census Bureau is required by the U.S. Constitution to count everyone living in this country, regardless of immigration or citizenship status.

Over 130 million households across the nation received a census form in March 2010.

Replacement forms were mailed to many households starting April 1, 2010.

The Nonresponse Follow-up (NRFU) operation is conducted in areas where 2010 census forms were mailed through the U.S. Postal Service or were hand-delivered by census employees. In both situations, residents were asked to fill out and return the forms by mail. If the Census Bureau does not receive a completed form from a residence by the end of the Mail out/Mail back period, a census taker will visit that address to take a count in-person.

1. The Mail out/Mail back period ends in late April, with NRFU operations launching May 1, 2010.

2. It is estimated that census workers will have to visit about 47.2 million homes during NRFU operations.

3. During peak operations, Local Census Offices will employ about 650,000 temporary census workers.

4. All NRFU production is scheduled to end no later than July 10, 2010.

5. Census takers must present an ID badge that contains a Department of Commerce watermark. The census taker may also be carrying a bag with a Census Bureau logo. If asked, the census taker will provide you with supervisor contact information and/or the Local Census Office phone number for verification. The census taker will only ask you the questions that appear on the census form. Census takers will not ask you for your social security number, bank account number, or credit card number.

6. Each census taker will have a flashcard containing a sentence about the 2010 Census written in approximately 50 languages. If a resident does not speak English, the census taker shows the flashcard to allow the resident to point to the language he/she speaks. A census crew leader will then reassign that address to a person who speaks that language.

7. Census takers will visit each address up to three times and may try to telephone up to three times. If a resident does not answer, the census taker will leave a door hanger with a number the resident can call to schedule an interview time. If contact is made by phone, the census worker will conduct the interview with the household member.

More information about the federal census is available at www.2010census.gov

Here’s the Friday open comments post, following reader responses to a recent poll.

The use of pseudonyms and anonymous postings will be fine.

Although the template has a space for a name, email address, and website, those who want to leave a field blank can do so. Comments will be moderated, against profanity or trolls. Otherwise, have at it.

I’ll keep the post open through Monday afternoon.

For this week, suggestions for topics — residential overlays to preserve local character, and “buying local.” Local surely means a lot to Whitewater. Does local mean more to Whitewater than other places? If it does, is that a good thing?

Have at it.

Good morning,

The forecast for Whitewater calls for a sunny day, with a high of eighty-two degrees.

It’s spirit day at Whitewater Middle School.

The Journal Sentinel Reports that that Wisconsin assemblyman Colon of Milwaukee will not seek re-election. He’s a Democrat, and his party could and will find someone better suited to office. For remarks on Colon, and his use of a bogus apology to another assemblyman, see Rushed Meetings in the Wisconsin Assembly.

I’d guess a fair number of readers are probably film fans, and Wired has a story online about “The Science of Horror-Movie Screams.” Here’s what researchers at UCLA found:

As horror-flick titles go, Night of the Living Chaos and Rosemary’s Nonlinearity aren’t the catchiest. But filmmakers know that chaos — the mathematical kind — is scary. Now scientists know it too.

Filmmakers use chaotic, unpredictable sounds to evoke particular emotions, say researchers who have assessed screams and other outbursts from more than 100 movies. The new findings, reported May 25 in Biology Letters, come as no surprise, but they do highlight an emerging if little-known area of study, says cognitive biologist W. Tecumseh Fitch of the University of Vienna in Austria, who was not involved in the study….

Cries are harder to ignore when they become irregular and chaotic, recent research suggests. Scientists think that these noises, uttered or roared when an animal is really worked up, have a crucial role in communication: They frantically demand attention.

By exploring the use of such dissonant, harsh sounds in film, scientists hope to get a better understanding of how fear is expressed, says study co-author Daniel Blumstein of the University of California, Los Angeles….

Blumstein and his co-authors acoustically analyzed 30-second cuts from more than 100 movies representing a broad array of genres. The movies included titles such as Aliens, Goldfinger, Annie Hall, The Green Mile, Slumdog Millionaire, Titanic, Carrie, The Shining and Black Hawk Down.

Not unexpectedly, the horror films had a lot of harsh and atonal screams. Dramatic films had sound tracks with fewer screams but a lot of abrupt changes in frequency. And adventure films, it turns out, had a surprising number of harsh male screams.

“Screams are basically chaos,” Fitch says.

.

Writing for his syndicated column, Jacob Sullum observes “The Gray Lady’s Inconsistent Defense of the First Amendment”. He’s right: the New York Times shows a bias for speech rights of liberal-leaning causes, but far less sympathy for speech rights in conservative causes. (Sullum: “The distinctions drawn by the Times are therefore hard to justify on constitutional grounds. They make more sense if you assume the paper’s editorialists are not eager to defend people’s rights when they have trouble identifying with them.”)

Sullum’s right — but then he knows, and we know — that this kind of bias at the NYT is objectionable but lawful: private parties may pick and choose, even in contradiction, the causes they wish to champion.

A fickle champion’s not a worthy one, but there are many of that ilk. If they are to change, then they will do so through persuasion alone.

One cannot feel so indifferent to the biases of government. Government favors, too, but here favoritism is often masked with a claim of neutrality. The state may contend that it isn’t picking sides, but merely wishes to advance a neutral, secular purpose. That’s a false neutrality — that supposedly neutral view is itself a side in a bigger debate.

Worse still, government taxes private citizens, and forcibly takes a part of their earnings, so that it can claim a prized and compulsory place in society, and in that place banish words and comments it deems insufficiently ‘neutral.’ The secular state is a compulsory, confiscatory bias against private conscience, thinly veiled as a impartial way of living.

If someone wants to build a private alternative, he does not do so with his full earnings at his disposal — he must build his private alternative only after government taxes him to build its supposedly neutral, but censorious, alternative. A world a prissy scolds, hectoring over what’s appropriate, is a world unsuited to a vigorous, free people. That a few middling men want to pretend their proper does not entitlement them to impose their conceits on an entire people.

I wholly support the First Amendment’s establishment clause — both government and faith are healthier if independent of each other.

What I do not support is government growing ever larger, taking more of the space and air that belongs properly to private, civil society, and imposing a false neutrality in that expanded space. Private alternatives are harder and harder to establish where everything is city-this, district-that, and state and federal still more.

That’s why the best answers to debates about what a municipal government or public district should limit or restrict call for limited public authority and robust private alternatives. Those who are wrongly burdened, for example, with what their children may say about a holiday, or what they may be taught, will find relief only in a society that does not permit the creeping overreach of government.

Private alternatives should not be difficult simply because government has already taxed away the private means to establish those alternatives. Available private choices lessen public conflicts.

I will readily concede that the New York Times is a mercurial advocate. More concerning, though, is the ceaseless bias and advocacy of supposedly neutral public authorities.

If you’ve not had a chance to catch John Stossel’s self-titled program, Stossel, on the Fox Business Channel, there’s a new program tonight, at 7 p.m. Central.

On tonight’s show, Stossel discusses the green craze:

‘Going green’ – it sounds so good, so pure! Who wouldn’t want to save the planet? What can we do? Bike to work? Ban plastic bags and use fluorescent light bulbs? How about using wind and solar power? Stossel tackles these ‘green myths’ and others such as ‘America can go carbon-free,’ ‘ethanol is a good fuel substitute,’ ‘the Energy Star label means it’s energy efficient,’ and ‘electric cars are the next big thing’ – The media have made that last claim since 1915!

Joining the program this week: Bjorn Lomborg, the Skeptical Environmentalist; Robert Bryce, author of “Power Hungry”; Heather Rogers, author of “Green Gone Wrong”; and Greg Kutz from the Government Accountability Office.

I support conservation causes, including the Nature Conservancy, and I’m skeptical about the over-use of the term green. Some projects just aren’t green, no matter how many fig leaves one tries to drape over them. That doesn’t mean there not worth doing – it simply means that one shouldn’t pretend that digging up a field is anything other than a brown project.

Saying otherwise only obscures — through inadvertence or intention — the actual environmental cost of an undertaking.

Molly Pitcher represents one of the best known symbols in American history. I’ll not wade into consideration of whether she was a certain colonial woman (by nickname), or a composite of several. For today, it’s enough for me to consider her example of courage under fire, and her willingness to take a stand after men nearby were injured.

I thought of her example yesterday. The picture that I’ve embedded above is one of myriad representations of her, fighting alongside American patriots against English tyranny.

She might have stayed away, run away, or taken a secondary position, far behind American lines. She did none of that — she stood her ground, putting herself at risk to reduce the risk to others. At the very least, she shared in their dangers.

It seems both right and sensible that Americans would respect a symbol of a courageous woman; we are not a people of faint hearts and quivering lips. For the disadvantaged and disabled we have every reason to be charitable and considerate; for those of conventional circumstances and abilities, we should — and do — expect strength, determination, and a robust defense of principle.

We expect this of both men and women; unlike softer, timid peoples, Americans don’t often favor women who are demure.

There is no woman more admirable than one who, when confronted with a challenge to principle, forms her slender fingers into a fist.

We are fortunate to live in an age of technological skill, but unfortunate that the men and women of our time often want for Pitcher’s zeal and courage. We’re a place of cossetted bureaucrats, from the federal government on down.

Our politics is distorted because it’s opportunistic and unprincipled, a man going from view to view, grand project to grand project, gauging the effect of his words and actions among a small collection of narrow, tired, dissipated insiders?

A manager, pondering the direction of the wind, does a struggling town no good. Grandstanding at easy moments is no worthy position at all.

Someone recently said to me that the municipal embrace of one idea or another is simply harmless celebration for every idea that comes along. I surely don’t believe that this city celebrates everything. Yet, where one does celebrate everything, one celebrates nothing meaningfully.

The City of Whitewater will not get better, she will not be well, until she discards opportunistic posturing for firm principle. I am sure Molly Pitcher would agree.

I posted on May 18th about an Environmental Protection Agency contest, entitled “Rulemaking Matters,” that offers twenty-five hundred deficit-financed dollar ($2,500) prize “for the public to explain federal rulemaking and motivate others to participate in the rulemaking process.” The libertarians of Reason.tv submitted three videos to the EPA, one of which I embedded before. See, Reason.tv: Federal Regulations and You – Partners in Democracy.

Here’s another of those videos, entitled (and subtitled!) Rulemaking Matters! Enjoy.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvXmDaqNueU

Good morning,

Our forecast calls for a day of gradual clearing with a high of eighty-two degrees.

Rousseau thought that animals showed simple pity toward each other, and perhaps, after all, he was right. Wired writes about a study of ravens, in story entitled, “Ravens Console Each Other After Fights,” observing that

After ravens see a friend get a beat down, they approach the victim and appear to console it, according to new research.

Orlaith Fraser and her co-author Thomas Bugnyar watched the aftermath of 152 fights over a two year period between 13 hand-reared young adult ravens housed at the Konrad Lorenz Research Station in Austria. What they found was the first evidence for birds consoling one another.

“It’s not a good thing for your partner to be distressed,” Fraser explained. “It’s interesting to see these behaviors in animals other than chimpanzees. It seems to be more ingrained in evolutionary history.”

And there might be a bit of self-interest embedded in the birds’ actions, too. “Maybe if you are involved in a fight they might come and console you,” Fraser said.

Ravens are one species of corvid, a famously smart group of birds, so they are natural study subjects for researchers probing the uniqueness of mammalian behaviors like empathetic consolation. The consolation of fight victims has only been definitely shown in chimpanzees and bonobos. Recent studies show similar behaviors in dogs and wolves, but how consolation works in those animals hasn’t been tested.

(Citation: “Do Ravens Show Consolation? Responses to Distressed Others,” by Orlaith Fraser and Thomas Bugnyar. PLoS one Vol. 5 Iss. 5. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0010605)

Ravens have an august and worthy history in recorded human affairs, too. Ravens are mentioned more than once in scripture: a raven is the first to look for dry land after the flood (Gn 8:7), they serve to feed the prophets (1 Kgs 17:4-6) , God may use them to afflict the wicked (Prv 30:17), and they may not be eaten (Lv 11).

Impressive, isn’t he?

The Wisconsin Historical Society recalls that on this date in 1844, a

Utopian Community [was] Founded Near Ripon

On this date the first settler moved to the Fourierite utopian community in what is now Ripon. This communal society was based upon the teachings of Charles Fourier, a French Socialist, who urged the rebuilding of society from its foundation as the only cure for economic hardship. This especially appealed to those suffering from the 1837 Depression. The communal village was named Ceresco after the goddess of agriculture, Ceres. Also known as the Wisconsin Phalanx, the community thrived for six years, with membership reaching 180 in 1845.

The community officially disbanded in 1850 after many members decided to farm for their own profit. Families gradually left the commune to work and live on their own property. The center of the commune, the “Long House,” remained vacant until the 1930s when people suffering from the Great Depression found shelter and comfort there. Community founder Warren Chase said of the failed community “It was prematurely born, and tried to live before its proper time, and of course, must die and be born again. So it did and here it lies.” [Source: Wisconsin Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes, pg. 94-104]

Here’s a video from Reason.tv’s Meredith Bragg. Entitled, “A Delicious Free Enterprise Contest Entry,” it’s one of the finalists in the the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s “I Am Free Enterprise” video contest.

The winner of will receive a $50,000 grand prize, to be determined through online voting. Readers can vote and view the other finalists every day until June 2nd at http://www.freeenterprise.com/take-action/video-contest/.

Government not required! By the way, after watching the video, I could really go for some kangaroo with aged cheddar on sourdough.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OehpD3E_Bcg