FREE WHITEWATER

Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Daily Bread, UW Madison

Daily Bread for 12.17.22: UW-Madison 8th in Nation for Research Spending

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 26. Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 4:21 PM for 9h 02m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 28.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1903, the Wright brothers make the first controlled powered, heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Rich Kremer reports UW-Madison remains 8th in nation for research spending (‘University reported $1.38B in research expenditures during 2021 fiscal year’):

Wisconsin’s flagship university ranked eighth in the nation between July 2020 and June 2021. The university reported nearly $1.4 billion in annual research spending across all fields, a $16 million increase over the prior fiscal year. 

The Higher Education Research and Development survey, or HERD, shows nearly $646 million in research spending from federal grants and awards and more than $412 million in spending from institutional funds. 

Steve Ackerman, UW-Madison’s vice chancellor for research and graduate education, said the rankings add a sense of pride among researchers across the university. 

“There’s always that idea of how does our research make the world a better place, and in particular the state a better place?” Ackerman said. “And this HERD survey is one of the metrics that we look at now.” 

….

UW-Madison was ranked fourth in the nation for research spending in 2014 but fell to sixth the following year. At the time, former Chancellor Rebecca Blank credited the drop to large cuts in state funding to the UW System. 

In 2018, the university fell again to eighth in the nation and has stayed there ever since.

Ackerman said things are turning around. He said during the pandemic, many faculty members spent time away from the lab writing and submitting research grant applications.

“Now we’re looking at changing that trajectory,” Ackerman said. “We’ve been at eight now for two years and looking to catapult ourselves to number six in a short time frame.”  

While this libertarian blogger has long been critical of mediocre administrative leadership on our campus and at the UW System, that criticism is founded first against injuries to individuals and then second against failures to fulfill a competitive academic position.

A legislative bias against the University of Wisconsin–Madison holds Wisconsin and America back, variously against other states or nations. Some of the same politicians who list UW System schools on their profiles are the first to pander to anti-university constituents. They should pick a lane. 

A competitive spirit to win research grants advances knowledge nationally and Wisconsin economically and culturally. 

Ant milk: The mysterious fluid that helps them thrive:

Daily Bread, Economy, Free Markets, Labor, Social Media, Twitter

Daily Bread for 12.16.22: Markets Will Decide Musk’s Fate

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with occasional snow showers and a high of 28. Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 4:22 PM for 9h 02m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 48.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1864, at the Battle of Nashville, the Union’s Army of the Cumberland routs and destroys the Confederacy’s Army of Tennessee, ending its effectiveness as a combat unit.

Kevin Roose reports Elon Musk, Management Guru? (‘Why the Twitter owner’s ruthless, unsparing style has made him a hero to many bosses in Silicon Valley’). The story relates how some other tech CEOs envy Musk’s autocratic style. 

Roose reports that 

In less than two months since taking over, Mr. Musk has fired more than half of Twitter’s staff, scared away many of its major advertisers, made (and unmade) a series of ill-advised changes to its verification program, angered regulators and politicians with erratic and offensive tweets, declared a short-lived war on Apple, greenlit a bizarre “Twitter Files” exposé, stopped paying rent on Twitter’s offices, and falsely accused the company’s former head of trust and safety of supporting pedophilia. His personal fortune has shrunk by billions of dollars, and he was booed at a Dave Chappelle show.

It’s not, by almost any measure, going well for him. And yet, one group is still firmly in Mr. Musk’s corner: Bosses.

In recent weeks, many tech executives, founders and investors have expressed their admiration for Mr. Musk, even as the billionaire has flailed at Twitter.

….

Tech elites don’t simply support Mr. Musk because they like him personally or because they agree with his anti-woke political crusades. (Although a number do.)

Rather, they view him as the standard-bearer of an emergent worldview they hope catches on more broadly in Silicon Valley.

The writer John Ganz has called this worldview “bossism” — a belief that the people who build and run important tech companies have ceded too much power to the entitled, lazy, overly woke people who work for them and need to start clawing it back.

In Mr. Ganz’s telling, Silicon Valley’s leading proponents of bossism — including Mr. Musk and the financiers Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel — are seizing an opportunity to tug the tech industry’s culture sharply to the right, taking leftist workers and worker-sympathizers down a peg while reinstating themselves and their fellow bosses to their rightful places atop the totem pole.

Some Musk sympathizers do view things in such stark, politicized terms. The writer and crypto founder Antonio García Martínez, for example, has hailed Mr. Musk’s Twitter takeover as “a revolt by entrepreneurial capital” against the “ESG grifters” and “Skittles-hair people” who populate the rank and file at companies like Twitter.

Sure, fine, whatever: it’s not merely what a given tech CEO thinks or does that matters, but whether he does so in market conditions that favor or disfavor workers. It’s not Musk, it’s the labor market, that will decide how much can be done. If workers can walk easily into other good tech jobs, then Twitter will lose out competitively to other employers. (A good part of Musk’s remaining labor force is green-card limited, and they have been easier to push around lest they become unemployed and have to leave the country if they don’t quickly find new employment.) 

But an autocratic CEO cannot live on risk-averse green-card workers forever. Musk and others can only do what they’d like if they’ve someone else to do what they’d like. Musk isn’t writing code; he’s sh*tposting on Twitter. (In Musk’s case, that’s figuratively and literally true.) 

The prospect’s for Musk’s Twitter ownership depend on market factors, including a labor market, beyond his control.

Huge aquarium bursts open wrecking Berlin hotel lobby:

Daily Bread, Health, Opioids, Public Health, University, UW System

Daily Bread for 12.15.22: Prudent UW System Campuses Are Installing Opioid Overdose Kits

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 4:21 PM for 9h 02m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 58.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM. 

 On this day in 1791, the United States Bill of Rights becomes law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly.

One hears so much about economics, in the thinnest way: the need for growth, the need for business subsidies, etc. All this is described as though economics were not a social science, as though nothing of social science or the humanities mattered. To look at a community’s economics properly is to think about its socio-economics, so much so that one should not need a compound term to describe these relationships. And yet, and yet, the prevalent, emaciated description of economics among local policymakers requires the addition of socio to remind how comprehensive should be its scope. (While socio-economics has a particular academic meaning, using the term generally at least corrects for a paltry grasp of human interaction.)

When people stop thinking narrowly about a business, or a few businesses, and start thinking comprehensively about interactions between people in the marketplace, their perspectives broaden. All those numbers involve human interactions. See The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Morality of Markets.

Universities want enrollment, but enrollment involves students, and students are people, and people have varied conditions and needs. Some of that enrollment, of students, who are people, may sadly involve struggles with addiction. Rich Kremer reports Growing number of UW System campuses installing opioid overdose kits (‘Six universities placing Nalox-ZONE boxes in dormitories, recreation centers and health offices’):

As opioid deaths surge in Wisconsin, a growing number of universities are making the overdose reversal drug naloxone publicly available in dormitories and other campus buildings. 

This fall, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, UW-La Crosse, UW-Eau Claire and UW-Parkside installed opioid overdose rescue kits called “Nalox-ZONE” boxes aimed at preventing opioid overdose deaths. They join UW-Oshkosh, which installed the boxes in late 2021. 

The Nalox-ZONE boxes look similar and are often located near Automated External Defibrillator, or AED, boxes in residence halls and recreation centers. They include a nasal spray bottle of naloxone, also known as Narcan, along with an emergency breathing device used while administering CPR. 

“We have not had any overdose deaths on campus,” UW-La Crosse Police Chief Allen Hill told Wisconsin Public Radio. “But, here in the Coulee Region, we’re seeing an increase in opioid overdoses and deaths. So it was definitely the right thing to do to stay proactive and go ahead and get them put in place.”

Every System campus should have these kits. Kremer’s reporting does not list UW-Whitewater as among the campuses installing opioid overdose rescue kits, although perhaps they have. If not, that installation should — and other universities show can — be accomplished quickly. This is not a matter of avoiding drug use or concealing the possibility of it. These kits are useful for those who are, in the moment, in the grip of a life-threatening overdose.

Nalox-ZONE boxes can preserve lives, and only after preservation is healing and restored good health possible.  

Unexplained leak from Soyuz spacecraft forces Russia to abort ISS spacewalk mission:

Courts, Daily Bread, Gerrymandering

Daily Bread for 12.14.22: Wisconsin’s Gerrymandering

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 42. Sunrise is 7:18 AM and sunset 4:21 PM for 9h 03m 10s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 66.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1911, Roald Amundsen‘s team, comprising himself, Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting, becomes the first to reach the South Pole.

Matthew DeFour writes Wisconsin’s Assembly maps are more skewed than ever. What happens now?:

In the latest round of redistricting, in which rulings from the conservative state and U.S. supreme courts allowed Republican legislative maps to prevail over objections from Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s Assembly skew only got worse.

That’s according to the “efficiency gap,” one of the measurements political scientists have developed to illustrate partisan gerrymandering. The efficiency gap measures how many votes are “wasted” — having no chance to affect the outcome — when one party’s voters are either packed into lopsided districts (Think of Dane County where almost 80 percent voted for Evers), while others are broken up, or cracked, into districts where the margins are closer, but the party drawing the maps is almost guaranteed to win.

….

One way to illustrate what packing and cracking in Wisconsin looks like: In the 10 closest Assembly races that Republicans won this year, the average margin was 7.5 points. In the 10 closest for Democrats it was 15.2 points. Wisconsin Watch didn’t analyze the Senate, where Republicans will control 21 of 33 seats with one vacancy in January, because only half of the seats were up for election this year with the rest up in 2024.

The Wisconsin Assembly’s efficiency gap under the 2011 maps was 11 percent, according to PlanScore, a nonprofit that tracks district fairness, where [associate professor of political science at George Washington University Chris] Warshaw is one of the principals.

PlanScore has yet to rate the 2022 results. But using the efficiency gap formula provided by Warshaw and the 2022 vote totals, Wisconsin Watch estimated the latest Assembly election results had an efficiency gap of about 17 percent favoring Republicans.

While the numbers can be useful to compare states, they essentially confirm an obvious problem: Wisconsin is nearly evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans — Evers won 51 percent to 48 percent — yet Republicans control nearly two-thirds of the legislative seats.

“This is not normal,” Warshaw said. “In all of American history we don’t observe many cases like this.”

There is, in April 2023, a contest for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat, with the winner to take a place on the high court bench in August 2023. 

Inertia would hold, however, that an object at rest tends to remain at rest (as an object in uniform motion tends to remain in uniform motion). 

Another decade of the same is the mostly likely outcome. 

What Happens to the Migrant Workers Who Built the World Cup?:

Daily Bread, Economy

Daily Bread for 12.13.22: Inflation Eases Again

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 38. Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 4:21 PM for 9h 03m 40s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 75.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM. 

 On this day in 1962, NASA launches Relay 1, the first active repeater communications satellite in orbit.

The New York Times reports this morning that new economic data show that Price Increases Cooled Notably in November as Inflation Begins to Ease:

Inflation slowed more than expected in November, an encouraging sign for Federal Reserve officials as they gather in Washington this week to discuss the next steps in their policy campaign against rapid price increases.

Fed policymakers are set to release their latest rate decision at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, at the conclusion of their two-day meeting. They are widely expected to raise interest rates by half a percentage point, slowing down after months of rapid three-quarter point moves. They will also release fresh economic projections, which could show them raising interest rates to a slightly higher level in 2023 than they had previously anticipated.

Tuesday’s inflation figures are likely to factor into their discussion about the future policy path. The Consumer Price Index measure climbed 7.1 percent in November compared to a year earlier, less than the 7.3 percent that economists had expected and a slowdown from 7.7 percent in the previous reading. Between October and November, prices also picked up more slowly than forecast.

After stripping out food and fuel prices, which move around a lot, the index climbed by 6 percent. That was less than the 6.1 percent Bloomberg projection.

Overall inflation has been decelerating on year-over-year basis since hitting a peak in June, a sign that price increases may be turning a corner after months of unexpected strength.

Still too high, but moving in the right direction. 

The Sanctuary Helping to Rescue Thailand’s Stray Dogs:

City, Conflicts of Interest, Daily Bread, Regulatory Capture

Daily Bread for 12.12.22: Calories and Compromise

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 37. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:21 PM for 9h 04m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 83.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6 PM. 

 On this day in 1941, as part of the Holocaust, Hitler declares the imminent extermination of the Jews at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery.

A person needs a certain amount of calories to be active, and while that amount varies between people, too few calories will impact that person’s health (and emotional outlook, by the way). 

The compromise of a person or community, however, is not similarly constrained. A community may brim with enthusiasm, but it may also descend to a malaise and doubt far lower than any caloric deficit.

There is, by contrast, seemingly no limit to how much a person or community can compromise on principles or standards. A starving person will tragically reach a bottom, from which neither further decline nor recovery is possible. A compromised person or community, however, can keep slicing alway principles and standards, ever more nicely, almost without end. 

A few conflicts of interest? There can be a more. A few instances of regulatory capture? There can be more. 

The starving person will presently notice the consequences of ill-health; the resident in a compromised community won’t observe so immediately or completely the consequences of compromised standards.

Of reduced standards, people often ask: is there a bottom?

The fitting reply: if there is, then it’s so far down that there might as well be none. 

Whitewater has the chance, one she deserves if anyplace deserves anything, to set her standards securely by setting aside past errors, omissions, and compromises.  

Chances like that don’t come about often.

Successful splash-down for the Artemis 1 moon mission spacecraft:

Blogging, City, Daily Bread, Newspapers

Daily Bread for 12.11.22: A Bad News Practice Lingers Where It Shouldn’t

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 38. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 04m 53s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 89.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1901, the Morris Pratt Institute is incorporated:

On this date spiritual leader Morris Pratt gained incorporation for his school of spiritualism located in Whitewater, Wisconsin. Many people of this time embraced spiritualism to try to reach friends and family who had died in the Civil War. As a result, Whitewater became known as the “mecca of modern spiritualism.” Pratt built his institute in 1888, which was initially used as a meeting place for public seances. Pratt decided to turn his institution into an educational school for spiritualists, focusing on science, literature, morality, and communication, as well as spiritualistic instruction. The institute was closed for a few years during the Depression, and then in 1977 relocated to Waukesha, where it remains one of the few institutes in the world that is dedicated to the study of spiritualism. [Source: Wisconsin Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes]

Longtime readers know that I am not, and have never claimed to be, a journalist. Journalists are journalists. Indeed, this libertarian blogger has by design and practice kept this a general interest blog. If I had wanted FREE WHITEWATER to have a different focus, then FW would have had a different focus. (It’s possible, perhaps probable, that some work here in Twenty Twenty-Three will take a more profession-specific cast, as some topics will dictate that approach.)      

What I am, however, is someone from a newspaper, magazine, journal, and book-reading family. I’ve occasionally been critical of newspaper coverage because, quite candidly, much newspaper coverage has declined over the years. In our area, we have been a veritable news desert for many years, until the arrival about two years ago of nearby of online news site. 

(A few words about public officials of the city and school district: if they cannot manage a proper online news site, then they need either to improve quickly or resign their positions. This is an American city with a university campus — if officials cannot or will not engage with a professional news site, they are unsuited to office. People who are afflicted, disabled, or disadvantaged deserve care and support. Public officeholders, by contrast, wield the power of government and so should either meet a high standard or return to private life.)  

Not as a journalist, but as a newspaper reader, one can see that the standard for publishing information about defendants has changed over time. It was once common everywhere to publish mug shots, and in some places to publish full addresses for mere defendants (that is, those accused but not convicted). The publishing of full addresses was never as common as the publishing of mug shots, by the way. 

Standards evolve, and mug shots have become disfavored, with publishing presumed-innocent-until-convicted defendants’ full addresses — never as common as mug shots — even less common now. (The obvious reason to avoid publishing a full address — rather than a location, such as a neighborhood or city block, is to limit the risk of reprisals against a presumed-innocent-until-convicted defendant.)

It’s lawful to publish defendants’ mug shots or full addresses, but it is no less small-minded for doing so.

Then and now, these efforts have a gawker’s sheen about them, and in the digital era desperate newspapers use them as clickbait. (The Lake Geneva Regional News, a Lee Enterprises paper, publishes full addresses, but then anyone who follows Lee would know that its flagship Wisconsin State Journal has bled three waves of serious journalists over the last fifteen years. Lee has not descended to a Sham Wow! level of attention-seeking, but it’s getting there. The APG newspapers — Janesville Gazette and Daily Jefferson County Union — are now less interesting than a Sham Wow commercial.) 

This libertarian blogger will never make the mistake of other sites by publishing a presumed-innocent-until-convicted defendant’s full address.

One needn’t stoop low. 

 Is Goat Yoga Just a Fad?:

Oh, please — everyone knows only cat yoga is genuine:

Agriculture, City, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.10.22: Growing Limes on… Orange Trees

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 37. Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 05m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 94.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the mediation of the Russo-Japanese War, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize in any field.

How Mexico Grows Limes on Orange Trees to Supply the US: 

The price of limes was three times higher than normal at the start of 2022. Droughts, freezes, and floods threatened the health of the fruit. We head to Veracruz, Mexico, to see how one farm is harvesting and processing millions of limes in the face of growing instability.

Lions Play With Soccer Ball to Celebrate World Cup:

Blogging, City, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.9.22: Twenty Twenty-Three

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will see some wet snow with a high of 34. Sunrise is 7:14 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 06m 24s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1775, British troops and Loyalists, misinformed about Patriot militia strength, lose the Battle of Great Bridge in Virginia.

People who live in a place naturally think about that place, and that leads to thinking about the past, present, and future of that place. It also means, from blogging, to look back, around, and ahead. Blogging begins not with writing but with observation and reading. Words on a page or keyboard come much later. 

There should be a method to writing about a topic, especially if that topic requires a lengthy project. Not every story or event can be addressed in a single post, but every post or lengthier project should have follow a method (especially the lengthier ones). See Steps for Blogging on a Policy or Proposal. 

After reading and walking about and observing, topics come to mind. At first, one lists what’s on one’s mind. See What Ails, What Heals. 

Afterward, only afterward, one asks: what would be the best way address these key topics, with what arguments and in what format? The arguments matter most, but the medium matters, too. How many posts? Are there new ways to display posts, as serialized parts of larger work embedded on a website? How much audio or video might be needed?  It seems to me that a bit of innovation is in order. 

There are weighty matters waiting to be addressed, and lengthy projects waiting to be accomplished. Twenty twenty-three beckons; she demands diligence, and diligence requires work. Good outcomes— better outcomes than otherwise — will come about if only we try. 

Out of What Ails, What Heals this libertarian blogger has before him a plan for some projects ahead. How many of these topics would be a series of  posts or something more requires some pondering, so to speak. Any list requires by addition a project on education (“A good high school education should prepare students to express themselves in standard spoken and written English, to grasp principles of math and science, and to understand the history and laws of our people. It is both false and wrong to say that this cannot be done, to ignore doing so, or to ignore explaining plainly how one is doing so.”) 

In all this, there is always the sensible reminder that, at any moment, tragedy or triumph may intrude and demand new considerations.

December is a good month to get ready for January and beyond. 

The world’s oldest DNA: Extinct beasts of ancient Greenland:

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, December 13th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Christmas Oranges

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Tuesday, December 13 at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Christmas Oranges @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Drama/Family. Rated PG; 1 hour, 41 minutes (2012).

Share a slice of Christmas sweetened with family and friendship in a poignant story based on a classic holiday tale. Starring Edward Herrmann and Nancy Stafford.

One can find more information about Christmas Oranges at the Internet Movie Database.

Cats, Weird Tales

Friday Catblogging: The Legend of the U.S. Capitol’s Demon Cat

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Erin Blakemore writes of The legend of the ‘demon cat’ that roams the U.S. Capitol:

Since its first rumored appearance in the 1890s, the so-called Demon Cat (known as “D.C”.) has left a trail of terrified people in its wake. Some say it has appeared before tragic events, like the stock market crash of 1929 or President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination. Here’s how this spooky myth got started—and why it persists today.

Cat myths in the 19th century

Reports of “demon cats”—both real and supernatural—were bizarrely commonplace during the 19th century. In fact, cat-related mythology dates back centuries around the world. Scholars attribute the ubiquity of these tales to cats’ bodies and behavior, from their otherworldly sounds to their nocturnal habits and glowing eyes.

In Japan, for example, bakneko legends depicted revenge-hungry cats that behaved like humans. Italian parents wishing to scare their children into good behavior told them terrifying tales of a gigantic feline called Gatto Mammone. In Slavic mythology, an evil ovinnik was thought to haunt barns and even set them on fire. And in Ireland, tales of demon cats abounded in local lore.

….

Regardless of the legend’s source, it only grew over the years. In 1935, a Capitol policeman told the Washington Post he’d shot his gun at a large black cat with “the generous proportions of Mae West plus the disposition of Bela Lugosi.” By then, believers thought the cat was a tabby with headlight-like eyes, saying it could be found at the White House, too.

The demon cat today

But a set of feline footprints may be the biggest driver of the Demon Cat’s fame. They can be found on the cement floor of the Small Senate Rotundanear the entrance to the Old Supreme Court Chamber.

The Architect of the Capitol, the federal office that maintains and preserves the Capitol Building, attributes the paw prints to the rat-killing cats that once roamed the building, but those who subscribe to the Demon Cat myth disagree. They say the footprints only appeared after the rotunda was nearly destroyed by an explosion in 1898—an explosion they attribute to the malicious cat even though the official record says a gas explosion was to blame. These believers also say the initials D.C. carved into the same floor stand for Demon Cat.

 

Daily Bread, Education, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 12.8.22: Enrollment Grows at Wisconsin Technical Colleges

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 39. Sunrise is 7:13 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 07m 15s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM. 

 On this day in 1941, President Roosevelt declares December 7 to be “a date which will live in infamy,” after which the U.S. declares war on Japan.

Much — but not all — of the news about enrollments at post-secondary schools points to decline. Wisconsin’s technical colleges are seeing increases in enrollment, as Rich Kremer reports in Enrollment at Wisconsin technical colleges grows by more than 10 percent:

Enrollment across the Wisconsin Technical College System grew by more than 10 percent during the 2021-22 academic year. The increase follows a double-digit enrollment decline driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and marks the largest gains for the system in at least a decade. 

All of the state’s 16 technical colleges saw enrollment gains during the 2021-22 school year, according to the most recent WTCS Factbook.

Nicolet Area Technical College in Rhinelander saw the largest increase of 21.9 percent over the previous academic year. Western Technical College in La Crosse reported a 19 percent increase and Northcentral Technical College in Wausau posted gains of 15.5 percent year-over-year. 

The enrollment growth marks a notable turnaround for Wisconsin Technical College System, or WTCS, which saw a 13.2 percent decrease during the 2020-21 academic year driven by the pandemic. During that span, a majority of colleges saw double-digit declines and some saw enrollment fall by more than 20 percent. 

Overall, WTCS added 25,669 students in the 2021-22 academic year. 

WTCS President Morna Foy told Wisconsin Public Radio the enrollment growth is great news for the state’s tech colleges, but there’s still a ways to go before numbers hit pre-pandemic levels. 

Wisconsin’s key requirement for K-12 education is to assure that by the time students leave high school, they have a strong foundation for whatever awaits them next. Whether it’s full time employment, a technical college, a two-year college, a four-year program, or a combination from among these choices, students graduated from high school can and should have foundation in humanities and sciences. 

A good high school education should prepare students to express themselves in standard spoken and written English, to grasp principles of math and science, and to understand the history and laws of our people.

It is both false and wrong to say that this cannot be done, to ignore doing so, or to ignore explaining plainly how one is doing so.

More important than a referendum, more important even than particular candidacies for a school board, is a review of what and how a district explains at each opportunity what it is doing to teach students these fundamentals. 

That’s a worthy project.

Putin vs. the Priest: A Big Story About a Small Sermon:

The Opinion video above tells the story of Father Ioann Burdin, a priest with the Russian Orthodox Church who ran afoul of his government soon after Russia invaded Ukraine. His crime? Well, we don’t want to spoil the plot for you. Suffice it to say, Father Ioann’s tale shows the hazards of following your moral compass in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. (He’s still paying the price.)

The story also explores the often tragic absurdity of the modern Russian state, something that Father Ioann, in our conversations with him, described with a wryness and wit that informed our telling of his story.

To help capture this sensibility, we invited Gary Shteyngart, a Soviet-born American satirist and best-selling author, to serve as the video’s narrator. Born in Leningrad in 1972, Mr. Shteyngart immigrated to the United States when he was a child and grew up in Queens, New York. A critic reviewing his latest book for The New York Times described him as “a writer comparably superb at demonstrating absurdity and generating pathos.” That’s a fair summary of our intention with this video.