Valentine’s Day in town will bring snow showers (with an accumulation of less than an inch) with a high of twenty-one. Sunrise is 6:52 and sunset 5:25, for 10h 32m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 41.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
Friday’s FW poll asked if an Australian possum found in a toilet paper dispenser was a rare event or a harbinger of an animal invasion. Most respondents (56.52%) thought that it was a once-in-a-blue-moon event, but 43.48% thought that it was a harbinger of an inevitable possum invasion.
Seen from above, sheep-herding’s not just farm work, it’s beauty in motion:
Here’s schedule of posts for the week ahead, with other posts possible (if there are changes to these scheduled posts I’ll explain why):
Today: DB, post on Whitewater’s mentoring gap, evening post
Monday: DB, weekly music post, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN post, post on the Walworth County circuit judge race, evening post
Tuesday: DB, weekly education post, evening post
Wednesday: DB, weekly film post, recap of the Wisconsin spring primary, evening post
On this date the inventor of the modern typewriter, C. Latham Sholes, was born. Sholes moved to Wisconsin as a child and lived in Green Bay, Kenosha, and Milwaukee. In 1867, in Milwaukee, he presented his first model for the modern typewriter and patents for the device were taken out in 1868. Sholes took the advice of many mechanical experts, including Thomas Edison, and so claims that he was the sole inventor of the typewriter have often been disputed. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Homes, pg 316-328]
Saturday in town will be sunny, with a high of nine degrees. Sunrise is 6:53 and sunset 5:24, for 10h 30m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 30.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
It’s Freeze Fest today and the Special Olympics Polar Plunge at the Cravath Lakefront today. Check-In and Registration begins at from 10 AM, with an 11 AM Chili Cook-off, and a 12:00 PM Opening Ceremony & Plunging. There will also be a Snow Dogs presentation at the Irvin Young Library (11 AM -1 PM).
Among all things polar, a polar bear cub in Toronto recently saw snow for the first time, and liked what he saw:
On this date, in an effort to stop gasoline price wars, the state of Wisconsin established a minimum price of 16 cents per gallon for gasoline. [Source: Janesville Gazette]
Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square Capital, has waged a long campaign against Herbalife (in which he has a publicly-disclosed short position, that is, a bet against Herbalife’s future). Ackman’s a capitalist, activist, and philanthropist. (His politics are not mine – he recently urged Michael Bloomberg to run for president; Bloomberg is no libertarian.)
In his campaign against Herbalife, however, one sees Ackman’s deep humanity, a humanity wholly consistent with capitalism’s respect for individuals. Herbalife is a fraud and a cheat, offering a false promise to vulnerable people who invest in what’s truly a mid-level marketing scam. It’s more pyramid scheme than company. They prey on hopeful but unsophisticated small investors, often those who would like to share in America’s promise. Michael O. Johnson, CEO of Herbalife, is a repulsive schemer.
Above, I have embedded a video that Ackman has produced, where victims of Herbalife tell how they’ve been cheated.
Ackman has said that he will carry his short position against Herbalife “to the end of the earth.” That’s the very definition of a respectable position, view, or belief: that one will hold on, against any and all, to the very end. Not everyone believes Bill Ackman’s claims; in fact, Herbalife’s stock has been doing fairly well of late. His bet against them has been an expensive one.
But if he should be right, truly right, then why would he not double and double again his efforts to persuade others?
So he is doing, and in so doing, Bill Ackman is doing right, not merely for his investors, but for the many small investors that Herbalife cheats each and every day.
Looking at this one way, Bill Ackman didn’t have to wage a long war against Herbalife; he might have chosen any number of alternative causes. Looking at this another way – properly, I think – he most certainly did have to wage war against Herbalife, whatever the time or cost.
There is much to admire in his campaign against that foul company, and reason to emulate a commitment to fight ‘to the end of the earth’ in defense of other causes, too.
Larry Johnson is a renowned photographer. His specialty is feline portraiture. He travels around the world taking photos of show cats. I spent a weekend with Larry at a cat show in Parsippany, NJ to see him work his magic.
mlzml.com johnsonanimalphoto.com
Credits:
Directed/Edited: Mark Zemel
Camera: Tyler Jensen & Mark Zemel
Audio Mix: Jeff Curtin
Colorist: Ryan Rossillo
Title Animation: Mack Williams
Directors Notes just posted some behind-the-scenes info about the video! bit.ly/1Uyv3Sj
Friday in town will be cloudy in the morning, giving way to afternoon clouds and a high of seventeen. Sunrise is 6:55 and sunset 5:22, for 10h 27m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 19.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Here’s Lincoln, correctly, on Americanism and liberty, as C. Bradley Thompson cites him:
Abraham Lincoln helps us to understand the inconsistent and paradoxical relationship between the ideal and the real in American history. In his 1857 speech on the Dred Scott decision, Lincoln noted that the original theorists of Americanism, our founding fathers,
meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for a free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked up to, constantly laboured for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colours everywhere.[6]
Lincoln’s birthday remembrance: a great day for a great man.
2002 – Verona Athlete Wins Gold Medal in 2002 Olympics
On this date Verona’s Casey FitzRandolph won a gold medal at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games in the Men’s 500 Meters. He began his career on the ice playing ice hockey and was inspired by Madison native Eric Heiden, an Olympic speed skater. FitzRandolph tried speed skating in his hockey skates and soon caught the attention of coaches in Wisconsin. He became an Olympian in 1998, when he placed sixth in the 500 meters and seventh in the 1000 at the Nagano Olympic Games. At the Salt Lake City Games he broke the olympic record in the 500 meters with a time of 1:09:23.
Late last month, Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel joined law enforcement officials at a press conference to announce his support for a bill that would offer amnesty for underage drinkers who report incidents of sexual assault (whether reporting as claimants or bystanders). The bill (Senate Bill 656) would assure that someone could report an assault without worry of being cited for drinking, a possibility that might deter a claimant or bystander from contacting the police.
He was not alone in his support – SB 656 has support from both sides of the aisle, with both Republican and Democratic co-sponsors.
Once again, as with his meeting with sexual assault survivors (despite a refusal of UW-System officials to do likewise), one sees that A.G. Schimel understands that respect for individuals requires that their claims be heard. Whether their claims are meritorious is a matter to be determined after they’ve had a chance to offer a claim – failure to hear them out is deciding a matter a priori, a failure that would be inimical to the principles of a society based on individual rights.
(Those who are accused deserve and must have due process – that due process requires taking and processing a claim, not rejecting or pretending that claims have not been made.)
One alternative to hearing claims and offering due process to all individuals is a crude act utilitarianism in which university officials – in the name of protecting an organization’s reputation but truly to protect their own reputations – bury claims, ignore claimants, and ruin the careers of those who report incidents.
The UW System – and UW-Whitewater officials in particular – are accused by multiple claimants of burying claims (1 and 2), contending falsely that publicly-paid bureaucrats cannot speak to claimants, and insisting self-servingly that claims can only be presented one way.
A.G. Schimel’s support for SB 656 is support for the view that being heard can and should legitimately trump the circumstances surrounding when and how one makes oneself heard. His support further undermines the unpersuasive, risible contention that the Telfer Administration at UW-Whitewater acted on principle in these several matters.
There’s no serious choice in this: one can embrace the reasoned view of a well-educated, experienced prosecutor who has (sadly) seen many cases of assault in his career, or one can side with the flimsy, self-protective claims of lightweight administrators and their press flacks.
I’ve reviewed the SweetSpot previously, and here are a few quick remarks about the new menu and remodeling of their location at 226 West Whitewater Street. I’ve not yet reviewed the SweetSpot Bakehouse, on the other side of town at 1185 West Main St, Whitewater.
Remodel (and Menu Changes It Brings). The remodel adds a soda fountain, and brings the SweetSpot closer to being a sandwich shop as well as a coffee house. It’s had sandwiches before, but adding fountain soda moves the restaurant even farther in a lunchtime direction. In fact, by ambiance, it’s more a hybrid than solely a coffee shop. (A traditional coffee house would not have a soda fountain at all.)
We’re a small town, and there’s both benefit and need in offering an expanded lunch menu. A traditional, coffee-only shop with china cups and orders of pastries on plates might have trouble making a long-term go of it here.
And yet, a sandwich shop with à la carte side dishes (as this menu now has) is a stylistic contradiction (if an economical or lucrative change, depending on one’s vantage): a sandwich shop would typically include sides, as the old menu did.
Speed of Service. An independent coffee house (unlike a Starbucks) doesn’t have to move quickly. Service is languorous because for an old-school shop, speed’s not only unimportant, but actually unwelcome – one moves slowly and leisurely.
A sandwich shop can’t be slow – patrons wanting lunch are on a schedule, and need to get their food quickly to maximize the limited time that they have.
In my recent visits to the SweetSpot, lunchtime service has been too slow for some patrons, and people walked out. There’s a second electronic register, but on these occasions I’ve not seen it used.
When patrons walk out, they don’t vanish – they go elsewhere to eat. If they like elsewhere enough, they will not return to the original destination. Whitewater has more than one shop that offers sandwiches. Time hasn’t been a concern for me, but I can see that it is for others. It’s unexpected that a remodel and menu change did not bring, at the same time, a change in speed of lunchtime service.
As always, this post is delivered without financial or other connection to the establishment or its owner. The dining experience was that of an ordinary patron, without notice to the staff or requests for special consideration.
Thursday in town will be sunny and cold, with a high of eighteen degrees. Sunrise is 6:56 and sunset is 5:21, for 10h 24m 46s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 11.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Fire Department will hold a business meeting tonight at 7 PM.
On this day in 1861, Lincoln leaves for Washington, D.C.:
On a cold, rainy morning, Lincoln boarded a two-car private train loaded with his family’s belongings, which he himself had packed and bound. His wife, Mary Lincoln, was in St. Louis on a shopping trip, and joined him later in Indiana. It was a somber occasion. Lincoln was leaving his home and heading into the maw of national crisis. Since he had been elected, seven Southern states had seceded from the Union. Lincoln knew that his actions upon entering office would likely lead to civil war. He spoke to a crowd before departing: “Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young man to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being… I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail… To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.”
On this date the Territorial Legislature of Wisconsin met in Madison, only to be interrupted by the shooting of one member by another. The legislature was debating the appointment of Enos S. Baker for sheriff of Grant County when Charles Arndt made a sarcastic remark about Baker’s colleague, James Vineyard. After an uproar, adjournment was declared and when Arndt approached Vineyard’s desk, a fight broke out during which Vineyard drew his revolver and shot Arndt. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes]
About a year ago, I wrote a post on an off-campus meeting at which local notables and a search consultant (Jessica Kozloff) discussed a replacement for Richard Telfer. A story on that meeting, published in the Daily Union, is one of the best accounts of insiders’ thinking. See, from that newspaper, UW-Whitewater chancellor session held, http://www.dailyunion.com/news/article_f042575e-a63a-11e4-bcd8-939679ffcc09.html.
(The Daily Union may be a mediocre paper, but it’s a clear window into town notables’ inflated views of themselves, mistaken notions of quality, and willingness to say and believe any number of tall tales about the city. See, along these lines, The Last Inside Accounts.)
The DU story quotes Kozloff as dismissing the assertiveness of the local press, seeing that not as a problem, but as a benefit:
“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.”
Kozloff is right that the local press here is laughably weak (what she’s describing as ‘a very, very negative media’ would undoubtedly be investigative journalism and inquisitive reporting elsewhere). Gazette, DU, and the Banner (an online imitation, if not a parody, of a newspaper) have played critical roles in supporting local authorities at almost every turn.
(For those who doubt that the Banner‘s publisher could possibly imagine himself as a journalist of sorts, there’s confirmation of those pretensions in a Gazette story still online, in which he poses with a reporter’s notebook and a voice recorder: http://www.gazettextra.com/news/2008/jan/20/ambassador-records-community-life/. At the time, this must have seemed almost precious to the Gazette; it would have been closer to the truth to say that it was a foretaste of where quality of inquiry was headed, in a race to the bottom among declining newspapers and their imitators. The political-press relationship is so distorted here that one can be a candidate, and report on one’s candidacy, while describing oneself in the third-person in a childish attempt to downplay the conflict.)
Where Kozloff’s wrong, however, is in her implication of how news actually travels in this community. She wants to reassure her audience of notables that they needn’t worry about ‘negative’ news, but of course she’s reassuring only in the way a doctor would be reassuring when telling a morbidly obese patient that he’s fit and looks great: a few people will believe anything.
One can consider the contrast between what a few seem to think and how information actually travels.
What A Few Seem to Think. Even now – it’s 2016 – one can find examples of officials who must think (or hope, really) that information comes from only a few sources: DU, Gazette, and Banner. They’d also know that there’s word-of-mouth discussion, but would have less worry about it except in personal terms. (If there’s anyone left who thinks that the Register is a meaningful source of information, well…)
How Information Actually Travels. People read stories in the DU, Gazette, and Banner, to be sure. (Candidly, though, the actual penetration of either the DU or Gazette into the community is almost certainly far lower than their publishers would have one believe. That’s more true of the Gazette – sales of the paper locally or online subscriptions for Whitewater’s residents are surely small. Doubt this? Potential advertisers should ask for independent readership figures for Whitewater, that is, figures specific to the city. They’ll be surprised, if they even get anything.
But there are other ways that news travels, from email, blogs, Facebook, text messages, etc. On the blogging side, a post that mentions local policy (or responds to mention of local policy discussed elsewhere) reaches a significant audience within twenty-four to thirty-six hours of posting. That doesn’t mean everyone in the relevant group (city, school district, whatever) sees every post, but it’s about a day to a day-and-a-half before the post reaches a critical mass, to speak.
Their denial has never bothered me. In fact, it’s been a great advantage.
First, when a few carry on as though no one has heard a counter-argument, when in fact many have heard the counter-argument, those who pretend nothing in reply has been said look ridiculous. Even a few episodes like this makes a person look absurd. It leads to a situation part silly, part sad.
Second, I don’t think that Whitewater’s public policy differences are merely a choice between alternatives of equal quality. What officials say about something, and what one writes in reply, is not what will carry the day: the underlying soundness of a position is what matters most. Many of Whitewater’s policymakers evidently believe that it’s enough to sell something. No, and no again: only close alignment between one’s views and the fundamentals of policy and human nature can assure a view’s ultimate vindication. That’s why I see blogging – or any advocacy if undertaken properly – as both Commentary & Chronicle.
Third, remaining distant from local ‘movers and shakers’ assures that one will not be influenced, biased, or compromised by personal relationships. Most insiders in Whitewater are individually talented but – when part of a collective group – produce work below their individual abilities. See, Whitewater’s Major Public Institutions Produce a Net Loss (And Why It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way).
Given the choice, I would for both principled and practical reasons never trade my aerie for one at the Gazette, Daily Union, or Banner. Newspaper-oriented publications are on the wrong side of history. Part of that historically disadvantageous position comes from the costs of printing, but just as much from the top-down, authority-boosting perspectives they hold. One measures the strength of a position by considering whether one would trade it for another. There’s no reason to trade to a weaker position.
Groups – at least political or social groups with serious concerns – wanting to advance a message in this unfolding, new environment need to create their own messages with their own media. Relying on others’ media, when those media lack the energy or acumen to drive a serious political or social concern – is a recipe for failure.
