FREE WHITEWATER

Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Education, School District, University, UW System

A Theory About the Diverging Futures of the Whitewater Schools and UW-Whitewater

by  • 

33cscreenshotPost 7 in a weekly series.

Before I begin today’s post, I’ll mention that there is now an announcement at the Whitewater Unified School District’s webpage about academic success at one of our schools despite economic hardship. It’s a prominent mention, and that’s a good decision – we should lead with what we have truly done. For more on this topic, see Whitewater’s True and Worthy Success.

For today, it’s a working thesis of sorts, that came to me after a conversation with an education policymaker in Madison. It goes like this. While there are concerns about funding education at both the public school K12 and university levels, these programs would face markedly different futures if spending cuts continue.

Although local school districts must by law offer a minimum core of courses, and by law a core of the same courses as other school districts, that’s not true at UW System schools, where one could by restructuring treat the UW System (or much of it) as a single entity, and allocate previously-considered vital subjects between parts of the System. Over time, UW System schools would look less like separate, comprehensive universities and more like unique branches of a larger tree.

That’s not possible for K12 education. No one could offer science in Whitewater, with the expectation that students would take language arts in Fort Atkinson, and calculus in Jefferson.

One could, by contrast, divide subjects between System schools (far more than is true today).

My point is not that this would be desirable, but that it would be possible. It would mean that our comprehensive universities would be less comprehensive, so to speak. (In fact, the risks to a school like UW-Whitewater – and our city – might be considerable.) Cuts within (public schools) and cuts within, but presented as across (branches of a university system), would have a different character in description and impact.

In one case labor would (mostly notably) face layoffs, in the other wage stagnation.

We are not yet at the point of divergent futures, within a common, low-funding environment. We could be on our way, though, by the end of the decade.

I don’t know; I’m persuaded after my conversation that it’s at least one possible shape of things to come.

THE EDUCATION POST: Tuesdays @ 10 AM, here on FREE WHITEWATER.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.23.16

by  • 

Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday in town will be cloudy with a high of forty-four. Sunrise is 6:39 and sunset is 5:36, for 10h 57m 43s of daytime. We have a virtual full moon again today, with 99.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission will meet at 4:30 PM today, and her Zoning Code Committee at 7 PM.

On this day in 1778, better instruction begins:

Friedrich Wilhelm Rudolf Gerhard August, Freiherr von Steuben, a Prussian military officer, arrives at General George Washington’s encampment at Valley Forge on this day in 1778 and commences training soldiers in close-order drill, instilling new confidence and discipline in the demoralized Continental Army….

Von Steuben, who did not speak English, drafted a drill manual in French, which Alexander Hamilton and Nathanael Greene then translated into English. The Prussian drill techniques he shared were far more advanced than those of other European armies, let alone those of the ragtag Patriots. The ego-crushing methods of modern boot camp were practiced among the shoeless soldiers of Valley Forge with remarkable efficacy. Most important for 18th-century battle was an efficient method of firing and reloading weapons, which von Steuben forced the Patriots to practice until it became second nature.

Before von Steuben’s arrival, colonial American soldiers were notorious for their slovenly camp conditions. Von Steuben insisted on reorganization to establish basic hygiene. He demanded that kitchens and latrines be put on opposite sides of the camp, with latrines facing a downhill slope. (Just having latrines was novelty to the Continental troops who were accustomed to living among their own filth.)

On the merit of his efforts at Valley Forge, Washington recommended that von Steuben be named inspector general of the Continental Army; Congress complied. In this capacity, von Steuben propagated his methods throughout the Patriot forces by circulating his Blue Book, entitled Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States.

On this day in 1846, a malted milk king is born:

1846 – William Horlick Born

On this date William Horlick was born in Ruardean, Gloucestershire, England. A noted food manufacturer and philanthopist, Horlick arrived in the U.S. in 1869 and settled in Racine. In 1872 he moved to Chicago with his brother and began to manufacture food products. In 1876 his company moved to Racine where he began to experiment with creating a dried milk product. In 1887 he trademarked Malted Milk. In 1889 he opened a company branch in New York City and another in England the following year. He constructed additional plants in Racine in 1902 and 1905.

The company name was changed to Horlick’s Malted Milk Co. in 1906. This success enabled Horlick to achieve a widespread reputation as a philanthropist in Racine. He also helped fund the first Byrd expedition to the South Pole and the Amundsen expedition to the North Pole. After his death in 1936, control of the company passed to his son, Ander James Horlick. [Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, SHSW 1960, pg. 177]

It’s a flamingo today from JigZone:

Cats

February 22nd is a Great Day in Japan 

by  • 

Now in its 30th year, Cat Day has lit up Japanese social media with endless portraits of …cats as well as cat-themed doughnuts, cat-shaped biscuits, cat manga, cats staring soulfully out of windows, kittens mewing expectantly and so on. On this day it is Japan’s hugest trend on social media.

What happens on Cat Day?

Known as “Neko no Hi”, it was chosen because the date’s numerals, 2/22 (ni ni ni), are pronounced fairly closely to the sound a cat makes in Japan (nyan nyan nyan).

catday2016

Via These are the amazing things you can do in Japan on Cat Day @ BBC News.

HT Althouse Blog.

WGTB, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN

Hawking Fallacies at a Price of Over a Million

by  • 

WGTB logo PNG 112x89 Post 62 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green.

In the 12.15.15 meeting at which the Donhoue firm advocated note merely wastewater upgrades but waste importation into Whitewater, Donohue’s Mike Gerbitz contends that Whitewater’s large digester capacity (no longer needed locally) is a boon to the city, and that the earlier expenditure (now excess capacity) justifies a new program of waste importation. In fact,  his assessment is ill-considered, and represents a garden-variety economic fallacy that one can easily spot and refute. (Whitewater paid over one million dollars in consulting fees for thinking such as Gerbitz’s.) Here’s his argument, appearing at 29:31 on my video of the meeting (I’ll address his claims about what other communities are doing in future post):

I’ll offer some other perspective….And a number of communities in the upper Midwest, particularly here in Wisconsin have decided to leverage some of the investment previous generations have made to make wastewater treatment more cost effective. Thirty-five years ago somebody built, somebody decided to build, very large digesters, okay? Today you’re only using a very small fraction of that capacity, that this community has paid for, and is done paying for, and has been done paying for a long time….

See, Local Government Discusses a Waste Importation Project @ Vimeo, beginning at 29:31.

Gerbitz either doesn’t know – or hopes his audience doesn’t know – that he’s committed the economic fallacy of sunk costs, of believing that past expenditures should bind future action.

On the contrary, it’s irrational to commit to a future course simply because one has spent lavishly on a project in the past – one looks at the present possibilities for spending, and decides from among all present options what’s best going forward. (I’ll show later that advocacy for waste importation going forward rests – indeed requires – ignorance of the real costs of the project, including the side-effects of it.)

Julia Galef explains the fallacy in greater detail:

So I want to introduce you to a concept known as the sunk cost fallacy. Imagine that you’re going to the store and you’re halfway there when you realize, “Oh wait, the store is actually closed today.” But you figure, “Well, I’ve already come ten blocks. I might as well just go all the way to the store, you know, so that my ten blocks of walking won’t have been wasted. Well, this is a transparently silly way to reason and I doubt that any of us would actually go all the way to a store that we knew was closed just because we’d already gone ten blocks.

But this pattern of thinking is actually surprisingly common in scenarios that are a little bit less obvious than the store example. So, say you’re in a career and it’s becoming more and more clear to you that this isn’t actually a fulfilling career for you. You’d probably be happier somewhere else. But you figure I’ll just stick with it because I don’t want my past ten years of effort and time and money to have been wasted. So the time and money and effort and whatever else you’ve already spent is what we call the sunk cost. It’s gone no matter what you do going forward. And now you’re just trying to decide given that I’ve already spent that money or time or whatever, what choice is going to produce the best outcome for my future.

And the sunk cost fallacy then means making a choice not based on what outcome you think is going to be the best going forward but instead based on a desire not to see your past investment go to waste.

Once you start paying attention to the sunk cost fallacy you’ll probably notice at least a few things that you would like to be doing differently. And maybe those will be small scale things like, in my case, I now am much more willing to just abandon a book if a hundred pages in I conclude that I’m not enjoying it and I’m, you know, not getting any value out of it rather than trudging through the remaining 200-300 pages of the book just because I don’t want, you know, my past investment of a hundred pages, the time that I spent reading those hundred pages to go to waste.

And you might notice some large things, too. For example, I was in a Ph.D. program and started realizing, “Gee, this really isn’t the field for me.” And you know, it’s a shame that I have spent the last several years preparing for and working in this Ph.D. program but I genuinely predict going forward that I’d be happier if I switched to another field. And sometimes it really does take time to fully acknowledge to yourself that you don’t have any good reason to stick with the job or Ph.D. or project that you’ve been working on so long because sunk costs are painful. But at least having the sunk cost fallacy on your radar means that you have the opportunity at least to push past that and make the choice that instead will lead to the better outcomes for your future.

See, Julia Galef: The Sunk Costs Fallacy.

(It’s worth noting that attempts to refute the claim that costs should be calculated on the margin – and sunk costs ignored – often involve either appeals to the value of concealing past mistakes or contentions that people in real-world situations disregard an on-the margin analysis. Concealing past mistakes is of no advantage for policy here, and does not apply to a capacity now fallen into desuetude when a nearby dairy left the area; claims that people sometimes act otherwise than by following a margin-based assessment only show that some – such as Gerbitz, in this case – either act wastefully or seek to persuade others against a rational outcome.)

Over a million dollars for these consultants – but for it all, garden-variety error presented as sound advice.

WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN: Appearing at whengreenturnsbrown.com and re-posted Mondays @ 10 AM here on FREE WHITEWATER.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.22.16

by  • 

Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday in the Whippet City will be cloudy with a high of thirty-eight degrees. Sunrise is 6:40 and sunset 5:35, for 10h 54m 54s of daytime. We’ve a full moon today.

Whitewater’s School Board meets tonight at 7 PM.

On this day in 1980, the United States experiences a Miracle on Ice:

In one of the most dramatic upsets in Olympic history, the underdog U.S. hockey team, made up of college players, defeats the four-time defending gold-medal winning Soviet team at the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York. The Soviet squad, previously regarded as the finest in the world, fell to the youthful American team 4-3 before a frenzied crowd of 10,000 spectators. Two days later, the Americans defeated Finland 4-2 to clinch the hockey gold.

The Soviet team had captured the previous four Olympic hockey golds, going back to 1964, and had not lost an Olympic hockey game since 1968. Three days before the Lake Placid Games began, the Soviets routed the U.S. team 10-3 in an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The Americans looked scrappy, but few blamed them for it–their average age, after all, was only 22, and their team captain, Mike Eruzione, was recruited from the obscurity of the Toledo Blades of the International League.

On this day in 1922, ice isn’t the site of a victory, but the cause of a problem:

1922 – Ice Storm Wreaks Havoc

Unprecedented freezing rain and snow assaulted the Midwest February 21-23, 1922. In Wisconsin the central and southern parts of the state were most severely affected, with the counties between Lake Winnebago and Lake Michigan south to Racine being hardest hit. Ice coated trees and power lines, bringing them down and cutting off electricity, telephone and telegraph services.

Cities were isolated, roads were impassable, rivers rose, streets and basements flooded, and train service stopped or slowed. Near Little Chute a passenger train went off the rails, injuring several crew members. Appleton housed 150 stranded traveling salesmen, near Plymouth a sheet of river ice 35 feet long and nearly three feet thick washed onto the river bank, while in Sheboygan police rescued a flock of chickens and ducks from their flooded coop and a sick woman from her flooded home.

Icy streets caused numerous automobile accidents, but the only reported deaths were a team of horses in Appleton that were electrocuted by a fallen power line. Sources: Wisconsin newspaper accounts, February 22 and 23, including the Appleton Post-Crescent, the Sheboygan Press, Waukesha Daily Freeman, Oshkosh Daily Northwestern.

JigZone‘s puzzle for today is of a jellyfish:

Business, City, Development

A Man, His Bad Monkey, and the Rest of Us

by  • 

 A man walks through town with a small monkey on his shoulder. (A white-headed capuchin, Cebus capucinus, let’s say.) He walks with it about town, into meetings, focus groups, and visits with various officials of the local government. On many occasions, the monkey scratches, bites, or throws its feces at someone. This happens quite a few times.

Thereafter, at a public meeting, someone asks the man about his association with the monkey, and the man replies to that question –

Q: “How are you associated with the monkey?”

A: “I’m not associated with the monkey. That’s a mistake.”

Everyone familiar with the man’s travels about town knows he’s lying, and lying in the way that only the brazen or stupid tell lies: a complete denial in the face of evidence to the contrary.

That means, of course, that’s there’s something profoundly objectionable or unsuitable about the man as a business partner. He might be stupid, but he’s more likely brazen. His complete denial operates as a dare: Can I say anything to you, and have you move on without follow up?

Of course, others in the room know that the man has lied. He has been walking about town with a vile and filthy primate, and that nasty animal has been scratching, biting, and throwing feces on many occasions.

In one way, the single question and the answer it elicited has been successful: the man’s lied at the meeting, and others in the room now know it.

In another way, however, the single question lets the man go on too easily – it’s not enough that insiders know the man is a liar – his denial should be shown there and then for what it is, to all the community, as a blatant, bald-faced lie. A few quick follow ups will serve that purpose, including pictures showing the man with the monkey.

That’s more confrontational, to be sure, but it’s the man who has sparked confrontation by lying about his association with the ornery monkey. The follow up, even if heated, merely enforces an accountability to the truth that underlies a well-ordered society.

In the episode of the man and the monkey, follow up questions that some would describe as ‘grilling’ would be, in fact, a principled, admirable determination to assure lies do not go unremarked.

The more of that we have, the better: when we have more of it, then we’ll have less future need of it, as we’ll not be a mark for liars and charlatans.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.21.16

by  • 

Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 6:42 and sunset 5:34, for 10h 52m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Friday’s FW poll asked if readers thought that there should be a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, and a vote on that nominee, this year. Slightly over fifty-five percent thought that there should be (55.56%), and about forty-four percent (44.44%) thought that there shouldn’t be.

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, a post about asking questions, evening post
  • Monday: DB, weekly music post, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN post, evening post
  • Tuesday: DB, weekly education post, evening post
  • Wednesday: DB, weekly film post, evening post
  • Thursday: DB, a restaurant review, evening post
  • Friday: DB, weekly poll, weekly catblogging
  • Saturday: DB, weekly Animation post, evening post

Zither Filmography has a video online of he sun hitting Yosemite’s Horsetail Fall:

Shoot yesterday 2/15/2016. One of the most stunning moments in Yosemite National Park. We hiked about an hour from Southside Dr to a high plateau where you have full view of the tunnel from Village perspective.The setting sun hits Horsetail Fall at just the right angle to illuminate the upper reaches of the waterfall. And when conditions are perfect, Horsetail Fall glows from white to gold, red in the peak, then fade out quickly in 20 minutes.

On this day in 1972, Nixon arrives in China:

Occurring from February 21 to 28, 1972, the visit allowed the American public to view images of China for the first time in over two decades. Throughout the week the President and his most senior advisers engaged in substantive discussions with the PRC, including a meeting with ChairmanMao Zedong, while First Lady Pat Nixon toured schools, factories and hospitals in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou with the large American press corps in tow. Nixon dubbed the visit “the week that changed the world.”

The repercussions of the Nixon visit were vast, and included a significant shift in the Cold War balance, pitting the PRC with the U.S. against the Soviet Union. “Nixon going to China” has since become a metaphor for an unexpected or uncharacteristic action by a politician.

On this day in 1918, the Wisconsin Assembly declines to denounce Fighting Bob:

1918 – Denunciation of LaFollette rejected by Assembly

On this day, a move to denounce Sen. Robert LaFollette and the nine Wisconsin congressmen who refused to support World War I failed in the State Assembly, by a vote of 76-15. Calling LaFollette “disloyal,” the amendment’s originator, Democrat John F. Donnelly, insisted that LaFollette’s position did not reflect “the sentiment of the people of Wisconsin. We should not lack the courage to condemn his actions.” Reflecting the majority opinion, Assemblyman Charles F. Hart retorted that “The Wisconsin State Legislature went on record by passing a resolution telling the President that the people of this state did not want war. Now we are condemning them for doing that which we asked them to do.” [Source: Capital Times 2/21/1918, p.1]

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.20.16

by  • 

Good morning, Whitewater.

We’ll have a mild and mostly sunny Saturday in Whitewater, with a high of forty-eight. Sunrise is 6:43 and sunset 5:33, for 10h 49m 17s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1962, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth:

Glenn boarded the Friendship 7 spacecraft at 11:03 UTC on February 20, 1962 following an hour-and-a-half delay to replace a faulty component in the Atlas’s guidance system. The hatch was bolted in place at 12:10 UTC. Most of the 70 hatch bolts had been secured, when one was discovered to be broken. This caused a 42-minute delay while all the bolts were removed, the defective bolt was replaced and the hatch was re-bolted in place. The count was resumed at 11:25 UTC. The gantry was rolled back at 13:20 UTC. At 13:58 UTC the count was held for 25 minutes while liquid oxygen propellant valve was repaired.[7]

At 14:47 UTC, after two hours and 17 minutes of holds and three hours and 44 minutes after Glenn entered Friendship 7, engineer T. J. O’Malley pressed the button in the blockhouse launching the spacecraft.[8] At liftoff Glenn’s pulse rate climbed to 110 beats per minute (bpm).

30 seconds after liftoff the General Electric-Burroughs designed guidance system locked onto a radio transponder in the booster to guide the vehicle to orbit. As the Atlas and Friendship 7 passed through Max Q Glenn reported, “It’s a little bumpy about here.” After Max Q the flight smoothed out. At two minutes and 14 seconds after launch, the booster engines cut off and dropped away. Then at two minutes and twenty-four seconds, the escape tower was jettisoned, right on schedule.

After the tower was jettisoned, the Atlas and spacecraft pitched over still further, giving Glenn his first view of the horizon. He described the view as “a beautiful sight, looking eastward across the Atlantic.” Vibration increased as the last of the fuel supply was used up. Booster performance had been nearly flawless through the entire powered flight. At sustainer engine cut-off it was found that the Atlas had accelerated the capsule to a speed only 7 ft/s (2 m/s) below nominal. At 14:52 UTC, Friendship 7 was in orbit.

On this day in 1950, Sen. McCarthy accuses:

1950 – McCarthy Delivers Allegations to Senate

On this date, in a six-hour speech delivered before the U.S. Senate, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed he had the names of 81 U.S. government officials actively engaged in Communist activities, including “one of our foreign ministers.” [Source: Internet Archives]

Animals

Rum-Drinking, Knife-Wielding Ape in Brazil

by  • 

Alternative Title: Mendacious Out-Of Town Developers Present a Roundabout Proposal.

“It was a bar staff oversight that ended with the monkey drinking some rum and taking the knife,” Lt. Col Saul Laurentino of the local fire department told the aRede news website.

He said the monkey had apparently been tamed, perhaps after many visits to the pub. Or rather, the monkey WAS tame… until it was armed.

“After the knife he wanted no man around,” he said.

UPI reports that firefighters managed to disarm the monkey and release him into the woods, but he quickly went to another home and began acting aggressively and had to be captured again.

Local officials are deciding if he can be released into the wild again or sent into captivity.

Via Huffington Post.

Culture, University, UW System

12 Points on the Claims of Racial Incidents at UW-Whitewater

by  • 

I posted yesterday about a statement from UW-Whitewater’s Chancellor Kopper about allegations of racial incidents on our campus.  Kopper later walked back one of her concerns, about two students appearing in blackface in a photo (they claim they were just showing the results of a mud-pack facial).  See, The Claims of Ongoing Incidents on Campus (Updates).

A few remarks:

  1.  I think Chancellor Kopper wanted to do right by students who came to her with multiple grievances, not merely concerns about one photograph.
  2. I’ve embedded a clip from TMJ4.  Kopper was right to go on television; the story is a mixed outcome, but out front is better than out back.
  3.  Kopper must see that pulling back on her claim about the photo will be used – of course – to undermine concerns of many students over multiple incidents.
  4. On cue, Sen. Nass and Chief of Staff Mikalsen have seized on Kopper’s retraction of claims about the photo as evidence of her poor judgment.  By mid-afternoon yesterday, they had already contacted every media friend they have with a press release ridiculing an “over-reaction of Chancellor Beverly Kopper and other UW-Whitewater administrators without first checking the facts of the situation is a stark example of how political correctness has warped the mindset of highly educated university administrators. Frankly, these are the people responsible for educating our sons and daughters, but they seem incapable of applying reason or common sense.”  Sen. Nass and Mr. Mikalsen were born for press releases like this.
  5. Did Kopper over-react?  I don’t think so.  Her statement was about more than one episode.
  6. What process did Kopper use to determine the credibility of those in the photograph?
  7. Did Chancellor Kopper receive communications either from System officials or anyone on their behalf asking her to retract her claim about the photograph?
  8. Does anyone think that the UW System as now constituted would allow a chancellor to speak on these incidents independent of the veto of System VP Jim Villa (or those to whom he is attentive)?  If he wanted a particular determination, who doubts that he would get his way?
  9.  Sen. Nass thinks that Kopper used poor judgment when she saw the photo as racist, but somehow he accepts her judgment later that it wasn’t.  What, if anything, does Sen. Nass know about how she made her determination initially and subsequently?  Other than her statements, on what does Sen. Nass rely when assessing – himself, directly – the photograph?  Did he talk to anyone involved?
  10. The UW System is more centralized than ever.  Kopper cannot rely on local notables, or the staff her predecessor put together, to manage easily in that environment.  I’ve been critical of Sara Kuhl, and here’s another reason why: unless one intends to achieve nothing, Ms. Kuhl can’t get Chancellor Kopper through.  Beverly Kopper’s initial statement was sincere, but it doesn’t say much to say that it should – and could – have been crafted skillfully to inoculate against any individual error, while preserving the comprehensive meaning.  Look how easily Sen. Nass latched onto it, and once having latched onto a part, was able to push out a press release of his own.
  11. Unlike a politician or a blogger, UW-Whitewater’s chancellor is more constrained in commentary.  Others can go round after round, but an organizational hierarchy makes that more difficult for a local campus official.
  12. Chancellor Kopper’s success is not – needless to say – this blogger’s responsibility.  If she does what her predecessor did, after all, the school will go on.  If she follows that path, however, she will preside over a campus in comparative decline.  Say nothing except what’s already been said (no problems, all is well, etc.) and nothing will be achieved.  (Telfer left UW-Whitewater with huge liabilities that will grow more evident in the next year or two.)  That’s bad for Whitewater (and so of concern to the many of us who care about Whitewater).  The System, however, has other schools, and less need to worry over the fate of the one in our town.