Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS
Public Meetings
Planning Commission
by JOHN ADAMS •
Animals, Sports
Raptors of the French Open
by JOHN ADAMS •
Keeping the skies free of pigeons and pigeon droppings.
Animation, Film
Sunday Animation: Pink Troubles
by JOHN ADAMS •
Pink Troubles from Philip Hansen on Vimeo.
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 6.8.14
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will begin with clouds and grow increasingly sunny as the day progresses. We’ll have a high of seventy-one.
Friday’s FW poll asked whether a pilot or a sunbather was more to blame for a near-accident between an airplane and the vacationer. The plurality of respondents (45.83%) thought the sunbather was more to blame, with 29.17% blaming the pilot, and 25% finding both equally responsible.
Lightning storms pack enormous power, as one tree in New York learned the hard way:
On this day in 1867, Frank Lloyd Wright is born:
On this date Frank Lincoln Wright (he changed his middle name after his parents divorced) was born in Richland Center. An architect, author, and social critic, Wright’s artistic genius demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to create architectural space and vocabulary that drew inspiration from both nature and technology.
The son of William Cary Wright, a lawyer and music teacher, and Anna Lloyd Jones, a school teacher, Frank Lloyd Wright’s family moved to Madison in 1877 to be near Anna’s family in Spring Green. Wright briefly studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, after which he moved to Chicago to pursue a career in architecture.
Wright started his own firm in 1893 and between 1893 and 1901, 49 buildings designed by Wright were built. Some notable Frank Lloyd Wright structures in Wisconsin include S.C. Johnson and Son, Inc. Administration Building in Racine, the A.D. German Warehouse in Richland Center, and Taliesin and Hillside in Spring Green. The Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center in Madison was also based on Wright’s design. Frank Lloyd Wright died on April 9, 1959, in Phoenix, Arizona. [Source: American National Biography, Vol. 24, 1999, p.15]
Here’s Wright, in 1956, on the program What’s My Line? —
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 6.7.14
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning, Whitewater.
We’ll have a one-third chance of late afternoon showers, with a high of eighty-three today.
On this day in 1776, Richard Henry Lee, a delegate to the Second Continental Congress from Virginia, introduces a resolution:
That these United Colonies are, and of right out to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; that measures should be immediately taken for procuring the assistance of foreign powers, and a Confederation be formed to bind the colonies more closely together.
Astronaut Reid Wiseman, now aboard the International Space Station, recorded a Vine (a short, repeating video) showing that the sun never sets if one orbits parallel and above the boundary between day and night:
Agriculture, Animals
The Running of the Goats
by JOHN ADAMS •
Forty-four of ’em:
Animals, Cats, Weird Tales
Friday Catblogging: The Cabbit
by JOHN ADAMS •
Among the many mythological creatures of history, alongside unicorns, sea monsters, and abominable snowmen sits the legendary cat-rabbit hybrid, the cabbit.
One can find photographs of the supposed animal across the Internet:
Over at Messy Beast, Sarah Hartwell has the definitive guide to cabbits, entitled, Cabbits – A History of the Myth.
Hartwell traces the origin of the cabbit to the 1800s:
Back in the mid-1800s, the superficial similarity between the Manx cat and the rabbit inspired writer Joseph Train of Castle Douglas, Galloway to include the cabbit myth in his book “An Historical and Statistical Account of the Isle of Man” (1845). He stated that Manx cats were truly the product of matings between female cats and buck rabbits. His book included a somewhat grotesque engraving of a Manx cat, distorted to look like a cat-rabbit hybrid. We probably have Joseph Train to blame for the popularity of the cabbit myth which persists in spite of modern science.
Poll
Friday Poll: Airplane v. Sunbather
by JOHN ADAMS •
German pilot Juergen Drucker almost hit a sunbather while landing his small, private plane in a vacation spot.
Although Drucker admitted that his landing wasn’t “one of my greatest achievements in the cockpit,” isn’t there another side to this story? After all, isn’t the sunbather very close to a runway?
Who’s more responsible here, do you think: pilot, sunbather, or both equally?
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 6.6.14
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning, Whitewater.
In the city today, we’ll have a sunny day with a high of eighty degrees.
It’s the seventieth anniversary of the D-Day landings at Normandy on 6.6.1944.
Here’s the concluding game in Puzzability‘s Surround Sound series:
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This Week’s Game — June 2-6
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Surround Sound
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Hope you can tune in this week. For each day, we’ll give you three clues, each of which leads to a word. The answers to two of those clues, when placed together in the right order, have the name of a musical instrument spanning the gap between the answers. When the instrument’s name is removed, the remaining letters, in order, spell the answer to the day’s remaining clue. The clues are presented in random order.
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Example:
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Small women’s clothing size; play simply, as a guitar; location
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Answer:
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STRUMPETITE (from petite, strum, site; the instrument is a trumpet)
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What to Submit:
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Submit just the full string of letters, with the instrument in the middle (as “STRUMPETITE” in the example), for your answer.
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Friday, June 6
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Local Government, Politics
Why Don’t Politicians and Bureaucrats Get Any Better?
by JOHN ADAMS •
Someone wrote and asked me why I thought that politicians and bureaucrats don’t seem to learn from past mistakes. When controversies arise, why don’t officials seem to improve, responsively, over time?
Why do they seem to have learned almost nothing?
Well, many do learn and improve, but those who don’t are conspicuous.
I’ll suggest a few reasons that keep officials from learning from their mistakes.
1. They think they were right all long. They simply deny that they made any mistakes.
2. They don’t care about broad public opinion. Only the views of a few, like-minded insiders matter to them.
3. They’re not interested in policy, so they don’t understand the idea of policy mistakes. It’s personality and visibility that matters to them, and it’s enough to be seen and included in a small circle of supposed luminaries.
4. They see change and revision as weakness.
5. They have not been taught to think about more than one side of an issue. They reason and contend poorly not for lack of natural ability, but for lack of experience doing so. Habituated to a small, cosseted circle only increases their difficulty of anticipating other points of view, making counter-arguments, etc.
(In small-towns, politicians expect – and receive – a compliant press.)
What’s so odd isn’t anything about these several points — most people would understand them intuitively. What’s odd is that a meaningful number of officials somehow fail to improve, despite improvement being so sensible and readily achievable.
Members of declining factions can still see the need for others to change, in other failing organizations.
They rarely see this need in themselves, however, until it’s too late to make any meaningful adjustments.
What’s left?
They resort to grousing about how terrible things are among those in the next generation, and the smug but false contention that conditions were better when they still held genuine sway.
Whitewater addendum: Locally, the worst mistakes probably involve a huge dose of Point No. 1. Much of this likely involves pride, as an emotional refusal to believe change is necessary.
Some of these local gentlemen have a sense of entitlement that could not be greater if God, Himself, had given them tablets on Sinai.
For good policy, this proud stubbornness is, initially, a bad thing: mediocre programs and projects come into being. Over time, however, the proud refusal of a few to change course even in the face of obvious objections yields a community benefit: an addled clique only further alienates itself from the majority.
Posted originally at Daily Adams
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 6.5.14
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning, Whitewater.
We’ll have a sunny Thursday with a high of seventy-four and calm winds from the southeast at about five mph.
Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets this evening at 6 PM.
On this day in 1933, FDR takes America off the gold standard:
…the United States went off the gold standard, a monetary system in which currency is backed by gold, when Congress enacted a joint resolution nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold. The United States had been on a gold standard since 1879, except for an embargo on gold exports during World War I, but bank failures during the Great Depression of the 1930s frightened the public into hoarding gold, making the policy untenable…..
Today’s the anniversary of powdered milk:
1883 – Horlick’s Malted Milk Patented
On this date William Horlick patented the first powdered milk in the world. He named his new product, intended to be used as a health food for infants, “Malted Milk.” Horlick’s product went on to be used as a staple in fountain drinks as well as survival provisions. Malted milk was even included in explorations undertaken by Robert Peary, Roald Amundsen and Richard Byrd. [Source: Racine History]
Here’s Puzzability‘s Thursday game:
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This Week’s Game — June 2-6
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Surround Sound
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Hope you can tune in this week. For each day, we’ll give you three clues, each of which leads to a word. The answers to two of those clues, when placed together in the right order, have the name of a musical instrument spanning the gap between the answers. When the instrument’s name is removed, the remaining letters, in order, spell the answer to the day’s remaining clue. The clues are presented in random order.
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Example:
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Small women’s clothing size; play simply, as a guitar; location
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Answer:
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STRUMPETITE (from petite, strum, site; the instrument is a trumpet)
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What to Submit:
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Submit just the full string of letters, with the instrument in the middle (as “STRUMPETITE” in the example), for your answer.
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Thursday, June 5
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Corporate Welfare, Government Spending, Local Government, Taxes/Taxation
Creating Taxpayers as Government’s Goal
by JOHN ADAMS •
When seeking to persuade Milton, Wisconsin’s councilmembers to regulate food trucks, an incumbent merchant recently said that more competition might put him out of business, after which he would no longer be a taxpayer.
That’s telling: the incumbent’s appeal to government – to a room full of politicians and municipal bureaucrats – is that they should advance polices that increase opportunities to tax, to take private earnings.
At bottom, there is the crass appeal to local government’s avaricious and adversarial role: please, please, do what you can to take more from others for your desired ends.
Businessmen no longer appeal for lower taxes – they appeal for higher taxes on others, to stifle competition.
Rather than think that higher taxes are an addiction to be addressed, they see it as an addiction to be fed: there, baby, is what you need, right over there…”
What, by the way, do you think local government will do with that money? It’s not going to go to the poor; they’ve no cancer research in mind.
Government will use it to fund projects for its supporters and contributors. Not one of those people will be hungry; not one of those people will be ill.
Anderson, Cartoons & Comics
Goggles
by JOHN ADAMS •
