Good morning.
Whitewater’s week ends with showers and a high of seventy-seven.
Google’s daily puzzle asks about an animal: “What reptile order, which is still among us, lived alongside dinosaurs and swallows stones to stay underwater?”
NASA offers a video about the Jet Stream on Jupiter:
Libertarians harm themselves when they criticize Pres. Obama in the simpleminded way that the Right does.
The Kochs may be sure that more and more money into Americans for Prosperity will defeat Pres. Obama, but we have reason to doubt that it will work (the GOP candidates will have choppy sailing), and those GOP candidates offer libertarians little or nothing.
If we are to argue against Pres. Obama’s vast expansion of government , we would do well not to sound like the Republicans he now leads in national polls. It’s a conservative, Don Surber, who makes this point plainly when he writes that it’s foolish to attack Pres. Obama as a radical:
This is birtherism again. This is a loser issue. Even if you prove your point that beyond a shadow of a doubt that Barack Obama is a communist Muslim who is ineligible to be president, so what? He has been president for 3+ years. The question this year is not “is Obama a communist Muslim who is ineligible to be president” but rather “is Obama doing a good job — even if Obama were a communist Muslim who is ineligible to be president?”
Now I know that Obama’s a Democrat, Christian, and conventionally liberal, but Surber’s not speaking to libertarians, he’s speaking to the Right.
If Republicans want to take any position, they’re free to do so.
Not any position, however, is a winning one, nor is any position compatible with a healthy libertarian movement (whatever happens in November).
Posted originally on 3.19.12 at Daily Adams.
The best thing that city officials and members of the Community Development Authority can do for Whitewater is to promote good policies and enact good laws.
Do that, and others will be able to present Whitewater well to others.
Good morning.
It’s a Thursday of showers, and a high of seventy-seven, ahead for the Whippet City.
Forty years ago today, Congress sent a proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution to the states for ratification. It fell short of the three-fourths approval needed. In any event, America shouldn’t need an amendment to recognize rights equally true for men and women.
Oh happy day — it’s the birthday of Eugene Shephard, father of the hodag. The Wisconsin Historical Society has the details of Shepherd’s discovery invention:
On this date Eugene Shepard was born near Green Bay. Although he made his career in the lumbering business near Rhinelander, he was best known for his story-telling and practical jokes. He told many tales of Paul Bunyan, the mythical lumberjack, and drew pictures of the giant at work that became famous. Shepard also started a new legend about a prehistoric monster that roamed the woods of Wisconsin – the hodag. Shepard built the mythical monster out of wood and bull’s horns. He fooled everyone into believing it was alive, allowing it to be viewed only inside a dark tent. The beast was displayed at the Wausau and Antigo county fairs before Shepard admitted it was all a hoax. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners, by Fred L. Holmes, p.459-474]
Hard to top a post about the hodag, but Google’s daily puzzle, about an early Congressional mistake, still fascinates: “Due to an oversight in Congress, the state that joined the Union in 1803 didn’t officially become a state until what year?”
An unalloyed good: S&R of Whitewater helps meet increased need at area food pantries.
Via WISC Madison.
A photo taken a few days ago, but just as fitting on a hot Wednesday afternoon.
Sometimes the most telling discussion within a meeting occurs early, in remarks offered nearly offhand.
That was true with last night’s Common Council meeting, in remarks from her city manager, Kevin Brunner. Two of his topics deserve mention.
On the Innovation Center, the city manager distributed a glossy one-year anniversary book, and a glossy tri-fold brochure describing the Center. It’s such an old, tired approach that I’m not sure it’s serious.
There’s a place for marketing, but will anyone worth having choose the Center, or even learn about it this way? I’m not convinced. If the purpose of these glossy docs should be to use on a job interview (‘look what I helped build!’), then it makes some sense to me. That’s not a good reason to spend money, but at least it might work for an applicant looking for other pastures.
If the goal should be to sell the Center to the kinds of tenants who would be suited to its original purpose, I’d guess an all-electronic presentation would be better.
Greener, too.
A second topic came up early, too. There’s the chance that a local business, Generac, will win public approval for a bus line between the Janesville area and Whitewater. This is all very preliminary, but as the city manager mentioned it, I’ll respond.
Buses to shuttle a private businesses’s workers from Whitewater to other cities should be that business’s private investment. Schemes to begin with private money, but then add public costs borne by all taxpayers, are unfair.
The residents of Whitewater, Janesville, or anywhere else do not owe Generac a bus line, or even part of a bus line. If they’ve hired many, for the considerable work they must be doing, the transportation for those workers should be Generac’s business concern, not Whitewater’s municipal one.
It’s also backwards thinking – if I understand the city manager’s description correctly – to begin with private money and then transition to public money. A drop of private fuel for a spark should not lead to a gas tank of public money.
I wouldn’t be inclined to this plan generally, but if it had any merit, it would start with a small amount of public money and then transition to private funds.
Better still: private Generac uses its own revenues for its own employees, as employer and employees mutually decide, without reliance on Whitewater’s general public.
Plans involving brochures and buses aren’t new ideas as much as confirmation about how misguided policy in this small city has been.
Good morning.
For Whitewater’s Wednesday, it’s a breezy day with a high of eighty-one.
From Google’s daily puzzle, it’s a mix of food and clothing: “I probably didn’t invent the beef fillet baked in puff pastry that shares my name. But I am responsible for an article of clothing. What is it?”
Update, 3.21.12: Turns out another Wired story is almost certainly a fraud: See, Bird-Man’s Resume Doesn’t Check Out: ‘Nobody Knows Him’. The story was improbable, but that doesn’t matter to me – it’s that it’s fake, regardless of likelihood, that matters.
I’m not particularly forgiving of a second shoddy story, so future Wired stories (parent company Conde Nast) are now banned from any site I publish.
I don’t care what they’re about – they will never appear on this site again. Light is forgivable and sometimes a guilty pleasure, but for sloppy-wrong I have no sympathy.
Original text:
If you’ve ever wanted to fly — fly the way birds do — perhaps you might want to talk to Dutch engineer Jarno Smeets.
Video from YouTube now removed – link to so-called ‘project website’ also removed.
It shouldn’t be odd that people speak more than one language. Many who arrived here, and all who were originally here, spoke a language other than English.
We’ve a multicultural community, and beyond it trade with all the world, yet use of other languages seems odd to us.
I remember being initially surprised when former District Administrator Suzanne Zentner encouraged Mandarin. I thought at the time that Spanish would have been the more practical choice (to her credit, Zentner also began listening sessions in Spanish).
But my early reaction was narrow: Zentner’s goals were ambitious ones, worthy American ambitions. Why should we each not manage a few languages well? We are a people of great accomplishment in science, technology, medicine, law, the arts: just about every field of study has Americans among its most proficient.
If we can build astonishing machines – and we can – we should be able to master languages equally remarkable to our physical creations.
But we don’t try, and we settle for English only.
In my own case, I have French, and am studying Brazilian Portuguese. That’s my version of Zentner’s interest in Mandarin: a bet on something for the new century, and an intellectual challenge, too.
God knows that I have tried to learn Spanish, but with only mediocre results. I cannot explain why French seems easy yet Spanish so difficult, but it’s a quirk I’ve yet to overcome.
(It’s not from fluency in Spanish, but as a recognition of Whitewater’s demographics, that I think the city should embrace its multicultural opportunities.)
There is no intellectual reason that students in our schools couldn’t be genuinely proficient in both English and one other language. Looking at it as too odd or too hard sells this community short, and imposes a cultural impediment to genuine intellectual accomplishment.
That’s deeply unfortunate, as both intellect and cultural benefit from fluency in other languages.
Good morning.
Whitewater’s Tuesday will be a mostly sunny day, with a high of eighty-one.
The city’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets at 6 PM, and Common Council at 6:30 PM.
The Wisconsin Historical Society recalls that on this day in 1854,
Republican Party Founded
On this date Free Soilers and Whigs outraged by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, met in Ripon to consider forming a new political party. The meeting’s organizer, Alvan E. Bovay, proposed the name “Republican” which had been suggested by New York editor Horace Greeley. You can see eyewitness accounts of the meeting, early Republican campaign documents, and other original sources on our page devoted to Wisconsin and the Republican Party. Though other places have claimed themselves as the birthplace of the Republican Party, this was the earliest meeting held for the purpose and the first to use the term Republican. [Source: History of Wisconsin, II: 218-219]
Google’s daily puzzle asks a political question: “How many electoral votes does your state have if your capitol building is adorned in ‘Beulah Red’?”
Here’s a picture of a horse grazing in Whitewater. It’s just a horse photo. No one describes pictures like that anymore, so I felt compelled to give it a stuffier title.
It’s still a horse photo.
If I were to call it Cavalo amarelo em pasto verde, people in Sao Paulo would still say: it’s just a horse photo (and an over-saturated photo at that).
But horses are elegant, this one is in Whitewater, and it’s fun to tease – the genesis of Pale horse in green pasture.
Good morning.
For Whitewater’s Monday, a chance of thunderstorms with a high of seventy-eight.
There are two principal public meetings in the city today: the Community Development Authority meets at 4:30 PM, and the Parks & Rec Board at 5 PM.
Google’s daily puzzle has a question for dog lovers: “The unique shape of what organ causes a particular breed of African dog to yodel instead of bark?”
For those who like to travel, NASA offers a Tour of the Moon from its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter:
