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by JOHN ADAMS •
Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 4.16.14
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
We’ll have a pretty Wednesday in Whitewater: sunny, breezy, with a high of fifty-two.
What would happen if a pianist and a singer (let’s say Jimmy Fallon and Anne Hathaway) decided to perform rap songs (let’s say Gin and Juice, In Da Club, and B*tch Don’t Kill My Vibe) as though they were Broadway tunes?
This is what would happen –
Clever.
On this day in 1944, America commissions the Wisconsin:
1944 – USS Wisconsin Commissioned
On this date the USS Wisconsin battleship was put into active duty for service during World War II. The ship, decommissioned in 1948, was recommissioned in 1951 for service in the Korean War. [Source: United States Navy]
Here’s Puzzability‘s Wednesday game:
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This Week’s Game — April 14-18
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Tax Deductions
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They say there are two things you can’t avoid, but this week we’re avoiding one of them. For each day, we started with a word or phrase and removed one instance of each of the letters in IRS anywhere in the word or phrase, but in order, to get a new word. Both pieces are described in each day’s clue, with the longer one first.
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Example:
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Those who provide equipment; soft and bendable
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Answer:
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Suppliers; supple
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What to Submit:
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Submit both pieces, with the longer one first (as “Suppliers; supple” in the example), for your answer.
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Wednesday, April 16
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City, Culture
What Would It Take for Someone to Believe Nothing’s Changed in Whitewater in a Generation?
by JOHN ADAMS •
Look around, and you’ll see both physical and social change in our small city.
What, then, might lead someone to insist that nothing in Whitewater seems to have changed in a generation?
Well, perhaps if someone spent a really long time living underground in a bomb shelter.
Even then, though, one would expect that someone emerging would notice at least a few new things…
(First minute of trailer embedded.)
Corporate Welfare, Gluttony, Innovation Center/Tech Park
Innovation as a Fad
by JOHN ADAMS •
Innovation is both a genuine development and a fad.
In a free society, with unrestricted flows of information, capital, labor, and goods, it’s nearly inevitable that people will improve products and services in powerful, clever ways.
Innovation – the word, the idea, etc. – is also a contemporary fad, the jargon of our time. It may be one of the greatest fads of our time, this ceaseless chattering over ‘innovation’ in our politics and economics. Read, watch, and listen and one finds that – from any direction – America must innovate, must be innovative, desperately needs Innovative Ideas, Innovation Centers, Innovation Programs, Innovation Projects, Innovation Cats & Dogs, Innovation Cereal, etc.
Over at the New Republic, there’s an essay entitled, Our Naive “Innovation” Fetish that describes how vacuous the term innovation has become. (The essay mostly criticizes the fad of innovation from the left, because that’s the orientation of the magazine. Still, author Evgeny Morozov rightly sees over-use of the term as an across-the-spectrum problem.)
I know that there’s a section in the local Gazette that focuses on innovation. The New Republic‘s essay pre-dates the section in the Gazette, but nicely illustrates the over-use of the word.
The term – repeated in communities incessantly as though it were a mental tic – is mostly empty when so repeated, borne of insecurity and the chicanery that feeds on insecurity.
‘Innovation’ has the nature, if not the illegality, of a confidence game to it: “It all begins with ‘you really, really need to do this,’ ‘I just know you can do it,’ and ‘let me be the one to help you.’
In so many cases, and certainly in Whitewater, projects for innovation are (1) schemes to take public money, (2) pretend it has a productive or civic purpose, (3) while actually using it to enrich undeserving, white-collar business people and their connected friends.
That’s not a crime, but it is repulsive corporate welfare.
It is the truly needy who have a claim to public support, not a collection of cunning, insatiable men.
Among those who flack innovation as a political solution, one will find, principally, the scared and the scheming. The first group is sadly desperate; the second is a white-collar group using others’ desperation for its own private profit at public expense.
Animation, Film
Film: Cachoeira
by JOHN ADAMS •
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 4.15.14
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
It’s a chilly but mostly sunny tax day for Whitewater, with a high of thirty-eight.
Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.
If you didn’t have the chance (or the viewing conditions) to enjoy the lunar eclipse this early morning, here’s a video replay from the Griffith Observatory. Moving ahead to around 1:40:00 in the video shows the deep red color of a so-called ‘blood moon.’
Video streaming by UstreamOn this day in 1783, Congress ratifies peace with Britain:
…the Continental Congress of the United States officially ratifies the preliminary peace treaty with Great Britain that was signed in November 1782. The congressional move brings the nascent nation one step closer to the conclusion of the Revolutionary War.
Five months later, on September 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed by representatives of the United States, Great Britain, Spain and France, officially bringing an end to the Revolutionary War. It also formalized Great Britain’s recognition of America’s independence….
This day in 1987, the first Brewers no-hitter:
1987 – Brewer’s First No-Hitter Game
On this date Juan Nieves recorded the Brewers first no-hitter, making him the first Puerto Rican-born pitcher to accomplish this feat in the Major Leauge. [Source: Milwaukee Brewers Timeline]
Here’s Puzzability’s Tuesday, tax-themed game:
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This Week’s Game — April 14-18
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Tax Deductions
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They say there are two things you can’t avoid, but this week we’re avoiding one of them. For each day, we started with a word or phrase and removed one instance of each of the letters in IRS anywhere in the word or phrase, but in order, to get a new word. Both pieces are described in each day’s clue, with the longer one first.
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Example:
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Those who provide equipment; soft and bendable
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Answer:
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Suppliers; supple
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What to Submit:
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Submit both pieces, with the longer one first (as “Suppliers; supple” in the example), for your answer.
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Tuesday, April 15
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City
The Art of the Con
by JOHN ADAMS •
I wrote recently about how deception works best when a magician asks someone to look closely in one direction, while he performs his trickery in another direction, outside one’s gaze.
(See, The Closer You Look, The Less You See.” See, also, Techniques of Municipal Distraction Numbers 1-9, Numbers 10-18, and Numbers 19-22.)
A skillful confidence game isn’t merely about tricking someone. It’s about tricking someone in a particular – highly effective – way.
The most effective – and so worst – confidence game isn’t when a swindler persuades a mark to have confidence in the con artist.
The worst con is when the swindler persuades the mark that he, the swindler, has confidence in his victim, the mark.
There’s a line from House of Games in which a con man explains a deeper fraud:
“It’s called a confidence game. Why? Because you give me your confidence? No. Because I give you mine.”
Persuading someone to believe in a confidence man is only a penultimate fraud; persuading a victim to believe in his – the victim’s – own supposed need and ability to overcome that need himself (through the con man’s proposal) is the foundation of the ultimate swindle.
It all begins with “you really, really need to do this,” “I just know you can do it,” and “let me be the one to help you.”
Seeing what’s coming – for what it is – is the beginning of a defense against it.
Animals, Cats, Politics
Be The Middle Cat
by JOHN ADAMS •
In a world of polar opposites, e.g., Left and Right, Republicans and Democrats, etc., there’s gain in taking an independent path.
It’s the middle cat that enjoys some meat, while others remain steadfast, but get nothing.
Music
Monday Music: Singin’ in the Rain
by JOHN ADAMS •
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 4.14.14
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Monday will be cloudy with a high of thirty-eight.
Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets tonight at 6 PM.
On this day in 1865, Pres. Lincoln is shot:
1865 – (Civil War) Lincoln Assassinated
On the evening of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot while watching a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. Although no Wisconsin troops were on hand, former Wisconsin governor Leonard Farwell was in the theater and rushed to warn Vice President Andrew Johnson of an impending attack.
On 4.14.1953, the Braves begin playing in Milwaukee:
1953 – Milwaukee Braves Debut
On this date the Milwaukee Braves made their official debut in Milwaukee, at the newly constructed County Stadium. They defeated the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-2, in 10 innings. Bill Bruton hit the game-winning home run. [Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online]
It’s tax-deadline week for most taxpayers, and to mark the occasion, Puzzability begins a new series entitled, Tax Deductions:
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This Week’s Game — April 14-18
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Tax Deductions
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They say there are two things you can’t avoid, but this week we’re avoiding one of them. For each day, we started with a word or phrase and removed one instance of each of the letters in IRS anywhere in the word or phrase, but in order, to get a new word. Both pieces are described in each day’s clue, with the longer one first.
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Example:
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Those who provide equipment; soft and bendable
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Answer:
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Suppliers; supple
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What to Submit:
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Submit both pieces, with the longer one first (as “Suppliers; supple” in the example), for your answer.
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Monday, April 14
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Public Meetings
Common Council
by JOHN ADAMS •
Animals, Health
Why It’s Hard to Swat a Fly
by JOHN ADAMS •
It’s not easy to swat a fly.
Although almost brainless by human standards, recent observations at the University of Washington reveal that flies have “well-developed, rapid-firing sensory motor circuits [useful] in order to register and respond to the visual threat of predators so fast and effectively.” See, Fruit flies show why swatting at flies is often fruitless.
Kate Prengaman, remarking on the academic study, writes that
Much like an airplane, a fly’s body can move in three dimensions: yaw (rotating along a vertical axis to change direction), pitch (tilting the head up or down), and roll (turning the body left or right).
Once the flies detected a threat, they “altered their flight path in a remarkably fast and accurate manner,” the authors found. What’s remarkably fast? Fewer than two wing beats. These flies beat their wings 200 times per second, so that’s less than a hundredth of a second….
In normal flight with no threat detected, the flies tend to turn in the same way an airplane does when it’s using its tail rudder to shift direction while maintaining a constant speed. They manage this by rotating on their yaw axis. But for evasive turns, the flies shift direction fives times as fast. They pitch and roll in a way that would probably make some of the passengers on an airplane reach for their barf bags. The flies rotate their bodies in one direction and then rotate back within just a few wing beats, using torque and counter torque to bank like a fighter jet.
That’s why you can’t swat them. Don’t think brainless bug. Think highly advanced military technology.
Fascinating, yet needless to say, although swatting is ineffective, there are other ways to combat flies. One simply has to find the right method.
Animation, Cartoons & Comics
Sunday Cartoon – Batman: Strange Days
by JOHN ADAMS •
America has a proud heritage of animation and movie serials. Here’s a recent animated short in the style of a 1930s serial, from Bruce Timm:
A brand new short from producer Bruce Timm featuring a lost tale from Batman’s past, the Dark Knight tracks a strange giant to the mysterious lair of Dr. Hugo Strange.
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 4.13.14
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Palm Sunday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of fifty-three. Rainfall will amount to between three-quarters and one inch.
On this day in 1796, an elephant arrives to the United States:
The America set sail from Calcutta for New York on December 3, 1795. Nothing of interest appears in Nathaniel Hathorne’s Logbook until Wednesday, February 17, 1796, at St. Helena. “This day begins with moderate breezes . . . latter part employed in landing 23 sacks of coffee . . . took on board several pumpkins and cabbages, some fresh fish for ship’s use, and greens for the elephant.” Below is written in large letters “ELEPHANT ON BOARD.” On February 24, the America stopped at the island of Ascension, where the men got several turtles and saw a large sea lion. The last page in the Log records the sighting of Long Island at 7:00 p.m. on April 11. From the times and distances, it can be estimated that the elephant must have been landed in New York on April 13, 1796.
(The logbook’s author, Nathaniel Hathorne, was the father of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author, who added a w to the family name.)
The elephant brought in 1796 was probably, but not certainly, Old Bet, an elephant that was part of a menagerie. Sadly, Old Bet was killed in July 1816 when a farmer shot her, on the theory that it was wrong to ask poor people to pay to see animals (but not, strangely, as wrong to kill animals and destroy others’ property).