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Monthly Archives: February 2015

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.28.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

The last day of the month in town will be increasingly cloudy with a high of seventeen. Sunrise is 6:30 and sunset 5:43, for 11h 12m 39s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 77.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Use of drones for photography allows shots that would be impossible (or almost impossibly dangerous) to photographers.

Video technology and science converge on an active volcano in Vanuatu, where explorer Sam Cossman operated camera-mounted drones to capture high-definition images of the spectacular yet dangerous Marum Crater. Cossman and his team piloted the drones over the 7.5-mile-wide (12-kilometer) caldera while confronting toxic gases and boiling lava. Although two drones succumbed to the harsh environment, the team was able to bring back video and photos that will help scientists learn more about the volcano and the life around it.

See, Drones Sacrificed for Spectacular Volcano Video @ YouTube.

On this day in 1844, an explosion on the USS Princeton kills six:

The USS Princeton was launched on September 5, 1843 and was considered a state-of-the-art ship. It included the very first screw propellers, as well as 42-pound carronades. The ship was also home to two long guns, the “Oregon” and the “Peacemaker”. The latter was the largest naval gun in the world. She was brought to Alexandria, Virginia for a display. Dignitaries present included President John Tyler and his cabinet, former First Lady Dolley Madison, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, as well as 400 other dignitaries. Refreshments were served in the salon below deck.

Captain Robert Stockton, who was excited to prove the Princeton’s speed and weaponry agreed to fire the Peacemaker in front of many onlookers. The original gun, the Orator (later renamed the Oregon, due to political disputes between Britain and the United States) and the Peacemaker were mounted onto the Princeton. Though the Orator had undergone intensive testing and had been reinforced due to cracks that were detrimental to the integrity of the cannon, Stockton rushed the second cannon (Peacemaker) and mounted it without much testing. According the Kilner, the Peacemaker was “fired only five times before certifying it as accurate and fully proofed.” After several test runs, the Princeton was considered ready.

The disaster occurred after Thomas Gilmer urged everyone to go upstairs for another demonstration of the guns. President Tyler was luckily stopped for drinks by another dignitary. As the Peacemaker fired one last time it exploded instantly sending hot metal around the deck, killing six, and injuring 20. The dead included Secretary of State Abel Upshur, Secretary of the Navy Thomas Gilmer, David Gardiner, Captain Beverly Kennon, the Chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair, Virgil Maxcy of Maryland, and President Tyler’s slave Armistead. None of the gun crew was killed.[2]

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.27.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

We’ll have a sunny but chilly day in the Whippet City, with a high of fourteen degrees. Sunrise is 6:23 and sunset is 5:42, with 11h 09m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 68.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On February 27, 1776, America defeats Britain at the Battle of Moores Creek:

In the early-morning hours of February 27, 1776, Commander Richard Caswell leads 1,000 Patriot troops in the successful Battle of Moores Creek over 1,600 British Loyalists. It would go down in history as the first American victory in the first organized campaign of the Revolutionary War.

Responding to the call by North Carolina Royal Governor Josiah Martin, British Colonel Donald McLeod began marching 1,600 Loyalists from Cross Creek, North Carolina, towards the coast, where they were supposed to rendezvous with other Loyalists and Redcoats at Brunswick, North Carolina. When Commander Caswell and the Patriots arrived at Moores Creek Bridge ahead of the British Loyalists, Caswell positioned his troops in the woods on either side of the bridge, awaiting the British with cannons and muskets at the ready. The British learned of the Patriot troops at Moores Creek in advance, but, expecting only a small force, decided to advance across the bridge to attack. The British Loyalists shouted, “King George and Broadswords!” as they advanced across the bridge; they were swiftly cut down by a barrage of Patriot musket and cannon fire.

The British Loyalists quickly surrendered, giving the Patriots their first victory of the Revolutionary War. The victory aborted British plans to land a force at Brunswick, North Carolina, and ended British authority in the state. Within two months, on April 12, 1776, North Carolina became the first state to vote in favor of independence from Britain.

The National Park Service commemorates the victory at Moores Creek with a National Battlefield Park at the site, which was established in 1926.

For more about the area, see Moores Creek National Battlefield, North Carolina.

Here’s the final game in Puzability‘s Singled Out series:

This Week’s Game — February 23-27
Singled Out
There are hits missing this week. For each day, fill in the two-word title of a #1 hit song so that a familiar phrase or compound word is formed by the first word in the clue followed by the first word in the song title, and likewise a phrase or word is formed by the second word in the song title followed by the second word in the clue.
Example:
GILA ____ ____ NOTE
Answer:
“Monster Mash”
What to Submit:
Submit the song title (as “Monster Mash” in the example) for your answer.
Friday, February 27
WEEK ____ ____ PITCH

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.26.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday will be cold with a high of eight degrees. Sunrise is 6:34 and sunset 5:41, for 11h 06m 55s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 58.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1993, a car bomb detonated at the World Trade Center kills six and injures over one-thousand:

An explosion apparently caused by a car bomb in an underground garage shook the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan with the force of a small earthquake shortly after noon yesterday, collapsing walls and floors, igniting fires and plunging the city’s largest building complex into a maelstrom of smoke, darkness and fearful chaos.

The police said the blast killed at least five people and left more than 650 others injured, mostly with smoke inhalation or minor burns, but dozens with cuts, bruises, broken bones or serious burns. The police said 476 were treated at hospitals and the rest by rescue and medical crews at the scene.

The explosion also trapped hundreds of people in debris or in smoke-filled stairwells and elevators of the towers overhead and forced the evacuation of more than 50,000 workers from a trade center bereft of power for lights and elevators for seven hours.

Here’s Puzzability‘s Thursday game:

This Week’s Game — February 23-27
Singled Out
There are hits missing this week. For each day, fill in the two-word title of a #1 hit song so that a familiar phrase or compound word is formed by the first word in the clue followed by the first word in the song title, and likewise a phrase or word is formed by the second word in the song title followed by the second word in the clue.
Example:
GILA ____ ____ NOTE
Answer:
“Monster Mash”
What to Submit:
Submit the song title (as “Monster Mash” in the example) for your answer.
Thursday, February 26
AFRICAN ____ ____ CHART

New Media, New Whitewater, Press, University

The Dark, Futile Dream

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UW-Whitewater is searching for a new chancellor, and so there’s a search committee, and a search consultant to guide that committee’s work.  The consultant is Dr. Jessica Kozloff, the former president of a small, undistinguished college in Pennsylvania.  (The UW System schools are, each of them, more competitive and developed than the one Dr. Kozloff led until 2007.)

Dr. Kozloff and others see, and perhaps dream, of a world where college presidents will act as they wish, when they wish, without meaningful scrutiny.  One can conclude as much after reading published remarks she made about the role of a college president:

One of the trends we’re finding in the search is that the role of the president is, to some degree, less attractive today because it’s everything from social media to the volatility of politics today,” she said. “All of that has sort of had an impact and made the role much more stressful, especially in a place that has a very, very negative media. However, that’s not going to be true here, so I think that’s going to help.”

Stressful, you see, because social media and the traditional media (at least, by her thinking, the ‘negative’ part of the traditional media) are watching public officials in the performance of their public duties.

I don’t doubt that Dr. Kozloff would prefer a world with a docile and fawning press, and without social media by which students, faculty, and residents might communicate news of administrative actions and decisions. 

Funny about all this: Kozloff is both laughably condescending and wrong at the same time. 

It’s too funny how she speaks to Whitewater’s insiders.  She speaks to them as though they were children, fit for a fairy tale about one Big Bad or another lurking in faraway places.  She speaks something like this: ‘Out there, beyond your safe little hamlet, lurk hungry reporters waiting to devour you.  Stay quiet, don’t make a sound, and maybe – just maybe – you’ll be safe.’

Funnier and sadder still would be the number that heard Dr. Kozloff speak and thought, ‘yes, that’s right.’

If these few are even half of what they claim to be, then why can’t they handle the thorough and series inquiries that come their way? 

It’s odd how wrong Kozloff is, too.  Of the traditional media, such as they now are, and where they’re heading, Kozloff seems profoundly ignorant. 

To be sure, she needn’t worry about the traditional print press of our area going negative; the only place they’re going is broke.  See, Last Call: The end of the printed newspaper.

They’ll not survive the media changes sweeping America – print (including the toadying one that yet persists in our area) – will not survive beyond the next several years.

At first blush, this demise might seem good for insiders, on the theory that no traditional print paper is better than any traditional print paper. 

Nothing could be more wrong.  The media that replace traditional print (with a few exceptions) will be more skeptical of authority, not less, as many of them will originate from non-traditional sources.     

As it stands now, most of the local print press is fawning, and willing to shill for almost any incumbent influencer or political swell it can find.  These pages upon pages are great for insiders’ scrapbooks, but the publications that churn them out have little time left. 

(Note to insiders: Hurry now to give yourselves every award you can concoct – there’ll soon be no admiring print publications to promote your ersatz honors. )

The loss of a supine press, catering to politicians, bureaucrats, and connected, big businesses, is a loss principally to insiders, not to advocates of good policymaking.

As for Whitewater particularly, media changes sweeping America will take from local town squires the reflexively supportive environment they falsely believe that they deserve.  No official in Whitewater will ever again operate without scrutiny. 

Consultant Jessica Kozloff will collect her money and drift away in some other direction. 

Her work will amount to nearly nothing.  Any insider relying on her counsel about the press, or one’s relationship to the community, will find himself or herself disappointed.  The cosseted environment about which she speaks crumbles all around; there’s no future in it. 

For our county and city, however, there is an irresistible movement toward better than we’ve had.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.25.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Wednesday will bring a fifty-percent chance of afternoon snow, on a day with a high of fifteen degrees. Sunrise is 6:35 and sunset 5:39, for 11h 04m 04s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 48% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Tech Park Board meets today at 8 AM, and the Community Development Authority at 5 PM.

On this day in 1949, actor Robert Mitchum gets out of jail:

Actor Robert Mitchum is released from a Los Angeles County prison farm after spending the final week of his two-month sentence for marijuana possession there.

In the fall of 1948, Mitchum, the star of classics such as Cape Fear and Night of the Hunter, was smoking a joint at a small party in the Laurel Canyon area of Los Angeles when detectives burst in and arrested him. Mitchum reportedly said at the time, “Well, this is the bitter end of everything—my career, my marriage, everything.” In fact, it wasn’t really that bad. Mitchum was separated from his wife Dorothy at the time, but the two reconciled when she returned to support him through the scandal. And the public didn’t mind much either; Rachel and the Stranger, the first movie released after his troubles, was a box-office hit.

There is some reason to believe that Mitchum’s arrest was less than fair and designed to bring publicity to the Los Angeles Police Department’s anti-drug efforts. Although high-priced studio lawyers questioned irregularities in the case, it was later agreed that Mitchum would accept 60 days in jail and several years’ probation.

Mitchum died in July 1997.

Earlier this week, Alaska became the third state (and the first red one) to legalize marijuana for personal consumption.

Here’s Puzzability‘s Wednesday game:

This Week’s Game — February 23-27
Singled Out
There are hits missing this week. For each day, fill in the two-word title of a #1 hit song so that a familiar phrase or compound word is formed by the first word in the clue followed by the first word in the song title, and likewise a phrase or word is formed by the second word in the song title followed by the second word in the clue.
Example:
GILA ____ ____ NOTE
Answer:
“Monster Mash”
What to Submit:
Submit the song title (as “Monster Mash” in the example) for your answer.
Wednesday, February 25
PLAZA ____ ____ CONDOR

Misconduct, Politics

The Act Utilitarians

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The worst of officials, even in a fair society, look like a parody of utilitarians: as though they were the crudest act utilitarians, justifying any action merely by whether it produces a presumed, aggregate benefit of happiness.

(Motivated only consideration of aggregate human enjoyment, for example, a perverse society of dog-haters might commit acts of cruelty against animals. Needless to say, a well-ordered society does not tolerate animal cruelty, let alone revel in it.)

Even among the many kinds of utilitarianism (itself a kind of consquentialism), there aren’t many who would take so crude an act utilitarian position. 

The majority of utilitarians recoil from a simple act utilitarianism. (Most utilitarians are, I’d imagine, rule utilitarians, adhering to rules derived from their reflections on what produces happiness among many people living in well-ordered societies.) 

But among the thoughtless, or among the selfish, there’s little more justification beyond a simple-minded act utilitarianism – ‘we did what we did for the greater good’ (where that greater good is a supposed net satisfaction among members of a community). 

At best, this ilk is thoughtless because it ignores individuals and denies individual right and liberties; at worst it is selfish because the professed community good is, at bottom, merely the reputational interest of a few leaders, not the welfare of their communities. 

Yet, however extreme these views seem, do they not lie at the heart of countless institutional scandals?  In so many of those cases, is not one official or his minion liable to whisper, ‘Do you think that publicizing the injury to one or a few justifies tarnishing an entire organization’s reputation? Don’t you think that you should think of the greater good, and stay silent?’

The greater good in these cases isn’t the good of the institution, but merely the wrongful preservation of bad leaders’ reputations.  They shamelessly, selfishly wrap themselves in the garb of a large institution or great number of people, only to conceal their self-preservation. 

(One can guess that I’m no utilitarian, although I see some versions of utilitarianism as less objectionable – as less odious – than others.  That’s a subject for another time.  For now, my point is that poor policy often looks like the least persuasive, least palatable form of utilitarianism – it looks like utilitarianism as farce & tragedy.) 

Among the truly vile beliefs into which people may fall – racism, bigotry, unjustified aggression, and collectivism being notable examples – a severe act utilitarianism is surely also one. 

One will find it where officials neglect or otherwise injure the few, and then insist that such neglect or those injuries were justified for the sake of the many. 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.24.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Whitewater has an even chance of snow today, with a high of twenty-eight. Sunrise is 6:37 and sunset 5:38, for 11h 01m 13s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 37.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

There will be a 1:30 PM hearing today on the termination of a Irvin Young Library employee. Later, at 4:30 PM, Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets.

On this day in 1868, the U.S. House of Representatives impeached Pres. Johnson for his dismissal of Sec. of War Edwin Stanton. (The Senate later acquitted Johnson.) The New York Times reported the proceedings:

The first act in the great civil drama of the nineteenth century is concluded. Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, stands impeached of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” It is of no use to argue whether his acts were right or wrong, whether the law he violated is constitutional or otherwise, or whether it is good or bad policy to proceed to this extreme. The House of Representatives, with a full realization of all the possible consequences, has solemnly decided that he shall be held to account in the manner prescribed by the Constitution for his alleged misdemeanors, and, be the result what it may, the issue is made. It must be met without delay, and the first step is already complete.

That the feeling here continues profoundly deep is evidenced by the grave character and solemn dignity of the proceedings of the House to-day. The unanimity of the Republican strength on this subject is one of the most surprising developments. Heretofore, there has been a majority of the Republicans in the House strongly opposed to appealing to the last resort, and it has been twice defeated. But the feeling now is that twice have they desisted, and thrice has the President accepted it as a special immunity from punishment on which he could rely. And now, regretting its necessity as much as ever, they accept the last resort as a stern but disagreeable duty, simply because magnanimity is no longer a virtue, and conciliation no longer a policy with a man who not only betrayed his party, but stops not even before his country’s peril. Such is their feeling; and they are ready not only to carry the issue through the Senate, but to that tribunal which is to give the final verdict — the American people.

Puzzability’s Singled Out game series continues with Tuesday’s game:

This Week’s Game — February 23-27
Singled Out
There are hits missing this week. For each day, fill in the two-word title of a #1 hit song so that a familiar phrase or compound word is formed by the first word in the clue followed by the first word in the song title, and likewise a phrase or word is formed by the second word in the song title followed by the second word in the clue.
Example:
GILA ____ ____ NOTE
Answer:
“Monster Mash”
What to Submit:
Submit the song title (as “Monster Mash” in the example) for your answer.
Tuesday, February 24
MURPHY ____ ____ CANE