A small, happy result after a greater tragedy:
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) – A dog that was feared dead after he was swept away in a weekend avalanche that killed his owner showed up four days later at the Montana motel where his owners had stayed the night before going backcountry skiing.
Not much snow (yet) in this part of the world. Do you miss it?
I know that I do.
Adorable even when yawning.
Good morning.
Unseasonably warm weather awaits Whitewater today: a partly sunny day with a high temperature of fifty. In the primary state of New Hampshire, Manchester will see a day of mostly cloudy skies and a high temp of thirty-nine.
Quick note on comments: I’ve opened up comments on posts, to be moderated against profanity and trolls, and to remain open automatically for two days’ time for each post. A few posts here or there may be closed to comments, but most will be open. I’ll craft a more complete comments policy, but for now, this will do.
Mark your calendars: 2012 will be a bit longer due to the decision of the ‘International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS)’ to add a leap second on June 30th:
A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of June 2012.
The sequence of dates of the UTC second markers will be:2012 June 30, 23h 59m 59s
2012 June 30, 23h 59m 60s
2012 July 1, 0h 0m 0s
Over at Wired, there’s a story about the imitative abilities of spiders: Clever Spiders Steal Rivals’ Dance Moves.
A team of biologists has discovered that male spiders spy on their rivals during courtship ceremonies, so they can mimic and pinch their most successful dance moves.
The researchers put male wolf spiders (Schizocosa ocreata) in front of tiny television sets and made them watch videos of other males perform a sexy, leg-tapping mating dance. The test spiders copied the on-screen males, adjusting the rate of leg-tapping to match and even outperform their rivals.
The spiders used in this study were collected from the field. Naive, lab-raised spiders who weren’t exposed to male courtship toward females didn’t understand the dance and the results were inconclusive. But spiders from the field, who knew what the leg-tapping was all about, behaved as if their on-screen rival was courting a nearby female.
There’s video proof of these findings:
Physicist Rhett Allain explains the biomechanics of flight, and why humans (on their own) don’t have what it takes.
Consider the following assessment, from the online Governors Journal and repeated in an editorial from the nearby Janesville Gazette (1.4.12):
Note however, how Governors Journal concluded its story: ‘Even if Walker is removed from office, he still wins the debate. Any setback will be temporary. Pension reforms are a reality.’
Consider that if you’re still contemplating whether to sign a petition.
Well, I have considered that statement, and it’s unpersuasive. (I will leave aside the motivations and nature of Governors Journal, and address only the statement.)
It matters enormously whether Walker wins or loses. There are very few Republicans who think it doesn’t matter, as though victory could be had as well (and more cheaply) with a Walker defeat.
Winning or losing will determine the course of the debate.
If Walker wins, his influence in the GOP will grow; if he loses, he’ll be pushed aside by other national GOP politicians who’ve won their elections (without having been through a recall attempt). Other Republicans won’t defer to Walker, or mimic his approach, if loses in the recall. They’ll push their own ideas, in their own names, to the fore.
It’s also false to think that this recall is simply about pension reform. Like Walker or not, he’s not known principally (and never will be) as a pension reformer — he’s known as someone who took on public employee unions through a reduction in their collective bargaining rights. (Walker denies that they’re collective bargaining rights at all.)
Walker’s program is far greater – whatever one thinks of it — than making public employees pay more toward their pensions. He could have done that through other means, but he chose a particular and far-reaching method. Not all reform programs are identical, or even equally sound.
Walker may win or he may lose, but it makes a difference. Pensions may be reformed, but how that’s done makes a difference.
It’s disingenuous to assert otherwise.
Over at National Review, libertarian Daniel Griswold makes the case for liberalized immigration policies, by reminding Republicans that current GOP Candidates Betray the Spirit of Reagan on Immigration.
Commenters at the site will have none of it, and are highly critical of Griswold’s views. Their criticism matters no more than if flat-earthers railed against the idea that the world was a sphere. It is and will remain a globe no matter how much others insist against the fact.
There is no better large-scale arrangement on immigration than a free market in labor. All else is inferior, being less efficient and less fair. For resources on immigration, see the Cato Institute’s thorough collection of studies.
Griswold makes the good and reasonable case for reformed, not restrictive, immigration policies:
Conservatives should be friendly to immigration, and the first to seek expanded opportunities for legal immigration. Immigration has been integral to America’s free and open economy. Immigrants embody the American spirit. They are self-starters seeking opportunity to support themselves and their families in the private sector.
Current immigration is driven largely by demand and supply. Immigrants come when there are jobs available that not enough Americans are able and willing to fill. That’s why immigration rates, legal and illegal, tend to fall when the economy is struggling, and to pick up as the economy grows. Immigrants stimulate job creation for natives by promoting investment, creating new products and services, and increasing demand for housing and other goods. Immigration keeps America demographically healthy while other, less open Western nations struggle with declining workforces.
Griswold correctly notes that immigrants not only boost our economy, but that they are less dangerous, and less likely to commit crimes, than native-born Americans.
Some GOP candidates today reject these truths, but Reagan understood and advocated for markets throughout his career. (Disgracefully, former GOP contender and all-around embarrassment Herman Cain even called for a lethally-electrified border fence between American and Mexico.)
There are, sadly, worse things than calling for an electrified fence. The harshest proposals call for a dramatic expansion of state power to detain and deport. (See, Wisconsin Assembly Bill 173.)
The most extreme proposals call for all these things in the name of the rule of law, as though any law were a good law. In this way, these harsher proposals serve as contemporary versions of Jim Crow – they are laws wrongful and shameful, no matter how they are enforced. (See, The War on Immigrants.)
Toward these unjust proposals, there can and should be no compromise. (See, Eight Steps for Responding to Political Wrongs.)
It’s a long and tough year ahead, on immigration and a dozen other topics. No matter: either one year or several should be met with the same diligent and zealous perseverance.
Good morning.
It’s a mostly sunny day with a high of forty-two ahead for Whitewater. In Pensacola, it will be a mostly sunny day with a high of sixty-six.
Yesterday’s Google puzzle was one of distance: “What’s the difference, in feet, between the highest point on land and the deepest point in the ocean?” Turns out, Google didn’t have in mind the distance between these two measurements, but simply the difference between them.
Google’s answer: “Search [deepest point undersea] to find that Earth’s deepest point is the Challenger Deep at around 36,000 feet. Estimates of depth vary from 35,813 feet to 36,168 feet. Search [highest point above sea level] to find Mt. Everest at 29,035 feet. Google the difference: [36,168 – 29,035] to find that the ocean’s deepest point is 7133 feet deeper than Mt. Everest is tall.”
Neither the span between depth below and height above, nor the linear or spherical distance between the highest and deepest points, mattered to Google. They were looking for a simpler answer. So was the question ambiguous, or did I over-complicate the possibilities? I’ll go with over-complicate, as the question’s just asking for a difference, not a span. I don’t have any New Year’s resolutions, but that’s not a bad lesson for the new year, five days in: simple is often right.
For today’s puzzle: “Consider the element that makes rubies red. What color does this element become when it’s added to beryl to create another precious gem?”
How’s this for the person who has almost everything? A personal drone:
The rigidity of over-planned, over-regulated economies underlies Europe’s other, deeper problem:
….G.D.P. per capita an insufficient indicator, but one most economists use in the U.S. is nearly 50 percent higher than it is in Europe. Even Europe’s best-performing large country, Germany, is about 20 percent poorer than the U.S. on a per-person basis and both countries have roughly 15 percent of their populations living below the poverty line. While Norway and Sweden are richer than the U.S., on average, they are more comparable to wealthy American microeconomies like Washington, D.C., or parts of Connecticut — both of which are actually considerably wealthier. A reporter in Greece once complained after I compared her country to Mississippi, America’s poorest state. She’s right: the comparison isn’t fair. The average Mississippian is richer than the average Greek.
Europe is undergoing not one but two simultaneous economic crises. The first is a rapid, obvious one — all about sovereign debt, a collapsing currency and austerity measures — that we hear about all the time. The second is insidious but more important. After decades of trying, Europe as a whole still can’t quite figure out how to be flexible enough to compete in the global economy….
Where does this leave Europe? Worse off even than Europeans’ own critical (and false) view of America:
European leaders like to mock the U.S. for its inequality and lack of social safety net. Though, for now, it looks as if Europe is headed for a two-tier society without any plan for improving the lot of the lower tier….
Via New York Times.com.
Some of the same gentlemen who campaign on the need for small government are willing to support aggressive federal immigration enforcement. Their confidence in the efficiency and fairness of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is absurdly misplaced:
There are still many unanswered questions about how an African-American girl who speaks no Spanish is mistaken for a foreign national. Immigration officials are investigating and released a statement late Tuesday.
ICE agents took fingerprints, but apparently never checked them before deporting Jakadrien Turner to Colombia, a place from which she has no ancestry.
Here one finds a level of carelessness and mediocrity unworthy of public funding or support. Even more startling is that this fourteen-year old American was accepted as a twenty-two year-old Colombian woman.
There are people who live their whole lives not half so negligent as the officials who deported this girl.
Yet, there are those far – and near – who would expand government authority to detain and deport. This expansion rests on a foolish confidence in government.
Via WFFA.
Brian Doherty, an historian of libertarian politics, surveys the scene in Iowa. Libertarian-leaning Ron Paul came in a respectable third, as all America now knows.
Is there any doubt that he would have done even better without the newsletter controversy (something Doherty has assured couldn’t matter, and about which he does not write in his post-election report)?
In any event, Paul’s not going away, but he might have pulled away in Iowa without the newsletter issue.
See, from Iowa, Doherty’s account of the caucuses.
Whitewater will see two contested Council races this year, for a district and an at-large seat. The at-large race will assure the city at least one new Council member from the two candidates; the district race has one incumbent and one challenger. (The school district has no contested races.)
If our laws were less burdensome, we’d have more candidates. I understand that these regulations are meant to assure ‘serious,’ candidates, but that’s the very problem: rather than let voters decide who’s serious in their own eyes, the law winnows presumptively.
There’s a lack of confidence in popular sovereignty that infuses fussy regulations. If this involved the work of engineering a spacecraft, one would understand the attention to minute detail – every millimeter counts. Election laws are nothing like aerospace engineering; campaign requirements for local office are unnecessarily demanding.
Along these lines, see How to Keep Roma or Bedouin from Dominating Whitewater, Wisconsin’s Politics.
There are lots of good questions about policy in Whitewater, and questions one could pose to these candidates. There may be an opportunity to pose them at one public forum or another.
This will be a busy year, and events elsewhere are sure to demand notice. Yet, it would be a shame if these races were ignored, and forgotten for Wisconsin recalls and federal senate and presidential races.
There’s time enough to think about both.
Good morning.
It’s warmer in Whitewater today than yesterday, and the high today will be thirty-five, with mostly sunny skies. In Manchester, NH, today will be increasingly cloudy with a high temperature of twenty-three.
There’s a Landmarks Commission meeting this afternoon in Whitewater, at 5 PM. The meeting agenda is available online.
On this day in 1923, in trying to prevent the kind of raucous behavior that might led to the collapse of Wisconsin’s social order,
1923 – Student Dancing [Was] Banned
On this date Milton College president A.E. Whitford banned dancing by students in off-campus, semi-public places such as confectionery stores. [Source: Janesville Gazette]
Via Wisconsin Historical Society.
Today’s puzzle from Google is one of measurement: “What’s the distance, in feet, between the highest point on land and the deepest point in the ocean?” Which distance, though, does Google mean? They might mean the distance between height and depth (most likely), or they might mean the linear or spherical distance between these two points. The first is the predictable answer, but I don’t think either of the other two would be wrong. We’ll see what they really meant when they reveal the answer tomorrow.
Of distances, is there a more impressive route than along this distance? Not likely —
Time Lapse From Space – Literally. The Journey Home. from Fragile Oasis on Vimeo.
I’ve had some doubts about whether Ron Paul is libertarian enough, but I’ve no doubt that he’s better on issues of market and political freedom than Rick Santorum.
Santorum’s nephew feels the same way about his uncle, and so is supporting Paul:
It is not the government’s job to dictate to individuals how they must live. The Constitution was designed to protect individual liberty. My Uncle Rick cannot fathom a society in which people cooperate and work with each other freely. When Republicans were spending so much money under President Bush, my uncle was right there along with them as a senator. The reason we have so much debt is not only because of Democrats, but also because of big-spending Republicans like my Uncle Rick.
It is because of this inability of status quo politicians to recognize the importance of our individual liberties that I have been drawn to Ron Paul. Unlike my uncle, he does not believe that the American people are incapable of forming decisions. He believes that an individual is more powerful than any group (a notion our founding fathers also believed in).
Santorum’s nephew, John Garver, is right about Santorum, who while a senator was also quite the big spender.
Garver also shows a libertarian confidence and optimism in ordinary people’s judgment that Santorum’s more restrictive and regulatory views lack.
Via The Daily Caller.
