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Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Poll

Friday Poll: An Engagement Ring Briefly Worn

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There’s a story over at the Huffington Post about a man trying to sell an engagement ring returned to him by a former fiancée (by his account, ‘Satan Herself’). The seller reveals his two options for the returned jewelry: (1) sell the ring or (2) throw it away (‘into the fires of Mordor’).

He describes the ring, in a Craigslist ad, below:

For sale I have a 1.5ct total weight engagement ring set in 14K white gold. The ring is in like new condition, only worn for a short period of time by Satan herself. Comes with the original box. Very pretty ring with a lower setting so the diamonds won’t snag on everything. Diamonds along the sides and in the channel setting show off light from all sides. Originally purchased from Littman’s for a sum of money far greater than I am comfortable admitting.

Warning: ring may be cursed as it tends to leave a path of destruction behind it. Possible events associated with this ring include but are not limited to: damage sustained to house, vehicle, heart, downed powerlines, fallen trees, and swarms of locust. I would highly recommend taking action to counter the whirlwind of bad mojo that surround this piece of jewelry. Should consider having curse removed by voodoo priest or something before presenting to loved one. Other than that a very nice piece of jewelry.

Looking to sell this soon before it brings any more bad luck into my life and I’d rather have cash. If not sold by Christmas I plan to throw it into the fires of Mordor.

Which would you do, sell or discard the ring?

I’ll say sell, as Mordor’s quite a distance, and some of the proceeds could go to charity, the rest for self-help books on picking suitable fiancée.

How about you?


Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.6.13

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventeen.

On this day in 1884, workers finish the Washington Monument:

…in Washington, D.C., workers place a nine-inch aluminum pyramid atop a tower of white marble, completing the construction of an impressive monument to the city’s namesake and the nation’s first president, George Washington. As early as 1783, the infant U.S. Congress decided that a statue of George Washington, the great Revolutionary War general, should be placed near the site of the new Congressional building, wherever it might be. After then-President Washington asked him to lay out a new federal capital on the Potomac River in 1791, architect Pierre L’Enfant left a place for the statue at the western end of the sweeping National Mall (near the monument’s present location)….

Made of some 36,000 blocks of marble and granite stacked 555 feet in the air, the monument was the tallest structure in the world at the time of its completion in December 1884. In the six months following the dedication ceremony, over 10,000 people climbed the nearly 900 steps to the top of the Washington Monument. Today, an elevator makes the trip far easier, and more than 800,000 people visit the monument each year. A city law passed in 1910 restricted the height of new buildings to ensure that the monument will remain the tallest structure in Washington, D.C.–a fitting tribute to the man known as the “Father of His Country.”

On 12.6.1821, Wisconsin gets her first post office:

1821 – First Wisconsin Post Office Established
On this date the first Wisconsin post office was established in Green Bay. The first postmaster was John Deane and the office is still in existence. [Source: Wisconsin: Its Territorial and Statehood Post Offices, compiled by Frank Moertl, p.30]]

Puzzability‘s Festival of Lights series concludes today:

This Week’s Game — December 2-6
Festival of Lights
Here’s a bright idea for Hanukkah. The answer to each day’s trivia question this week is a two-word phrase, name, or title in which each word can be followed by the word “light” to make a compound word or phrase.
Example:
What was achieved for the first time by the Soviet Union in 1959 with an unmanned craft and by the U.S. 10 years later with a manned craft?
Answer:
Moon landing (moonlight, landing light)
What to Submit:
Submit the two-word trivia answer (as “Moon landing” in the example) for your answer.
Friday, December 6
What New Year’s Eve performance-based celebration was originated in 1975 by a group of Boston artists as an alternative to boozy parties?

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.5.13

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Good morning.

We’ll have a chance of flurries in the morning, then mostly sunny skies and temperatures falling into the twenties.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM, as will the Fire & Rescue Task Force (6 PM).

On this day in 1901, Walt Disney is born.

In the Wisconsin of December 5, 1879, a new organization:

1879 – Humane Society of Wisconsin Organized
On this date the Humane Society of Wisconsin was organized in Milwaukee. Inspired by Henry Bergh, a New York City philanthropist, and his Humane Movement, the state Humane Society was formed to protect both animals and children. However, with the formation of child protection laws in the early 1900s, the Humane Society of Wisconsin began to focus primarily on animal protection. [Source: Humane Society of Wisconsin]

Puzzability‘s Festival of Lights puzzles continue with their Thursday entry:

This Week’s Game — December 2-6
Festival of Lights
Here’s a bright idea for Hanukkah. The answer to each day’s trivia question this week is a two-word phrase, name, or title in which each word can be followed by the word “light” to make a compound word or phrase.
Example:
What was achieved for the first time by the Soviet Union in 1959 with an unmanned craft and by the U.S. 10 years later with a manned craft?
Answer:
Moon landing (moonlight, landing light)
What to Submit:
Submit the two-word trivia answer (as “Moon landing” in the example) for your answer.
Thursday, December 5
What Australian wine brand’s label features brackets around its name and a picture of a wallaby?

Corporate Welfare, Government Spending, Planning, Politics

The People in the Room

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Consider an invitation-only meeting, before a public one, in which appointed officials and perhaps a few corporate executives meet to discuss public financing of a deal mostly benefiting a few.  

One can say two things, with reasonable confidence, about a meeting like that.  First, no one attends a meeting of that kind to dissuade others from pursuing a deal.  Those who attend typically expect others in the room to accede to their demands.    

Second, as those who attend a ‘stakeholders’ meeting like this often learn later, there are no certainties of mutual aid no matter how reassuringly promised beforehand.  One may attend with the idea that everyone in the room is ‘in this together,’ but afterward it becomes clear that some of the parties really don’t give a damn about others’ needs.

Similar to when parties form a cartel (in some ways, but different in others), some have an incentive to act against a supposed, mutual understanding.  As the parties often have no true principle in common, and some believing that they are more important than others, the bigger ones have no reticence in cheating or otherwise betraying the smaller ones.

One can sit in that room, and try to make that deal, but one cannot do so with the assurance that it will be thereafter honored.  

Whitewater’s last decade is littered with projects like this, where a few huddled privately, and everyone was so sure, and so supportive, until it became clear that the parties missed major steps, ignored fundamental tasks, and had no idea of the consequences of their ill-considered (but grandiose) plans.

City, Corporate Welfare, Government Spending

Janesville & Generac’s Bus: Requesting Reductions

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At Whitewater’s mid-November council meeting, Generac declared it would pay considerably less for a transit bus than Janesville Transit had projected (seventy-two percent less), and the city and university agreed to pay fifty percent less than Janesville Transit requested of them.  Note to the city administration: multi-billion-dollar Generac easily got the better of those figures.  

(See, about that prior meeting, The Bus Discussion @ Council Last Night: A Fiasco by Any Definition.)    

On Tuesday, 12.3.13, Council had to decide how to request possible changes in the schedule, as the bus now receives about forty-three thousand less than Janesville Transit expected.  (That’s expected – as no one at that agency or in our city received firm commitments for costs that were projected.)  

For 2013, the bus makes five trips on weekdays, three on Saturdays, and two on Sundays.  

So, what to do?

One thing’s seems clear – this city administration will do what it can to keep this bus going. No one is attending meetings with so called ‘stakeholders’ so that he can wind down the program – that’s simply implausible.  More likely, each meeting of this kind is one in which outside institutions and organizations are insisting and cajoling Whitewater’s administration to do more, and find a way to bolster the program (whatever its consequences).

About that data from Janesville Transit. Councilman Binnie wonders why the driver can’t record passenger trips more specifically.  (He jokes that he can’t imagine the driver is so busy that trips cannot be recorded more specifically.  Funny that – if it’s not busy, why fund?)

Here are two quick replies.  First, the data from Janesville transit are double-counted, in any event, by that own agency’s admission.  (See, Council Session of 11.5.13 Video Link: http://vimeo.com/78821732 at 2:27:16.)

If Mr. Binnie has confidence in new data collection – when there is an admission that previously published ridership data are deceivingly high – then I would ask him to contact me about some swamp land a Garden Paradise™ for sale.  

Second, is it not likely that Janesville could have, but does not, collect accurate data on individual routes’ passenger totals because to do so would reveal that this is, truly, the publicly-funded tool of one big, private corporation?   (Here, one assumes that the data would be accurate, as they have most certainly not been.)  

Whitewater’s last administration had repeated problems with dodgy data, and we cannot now do better while simultaneously relying on other cities’ lower standards.  

Whitewater’s merchants.  It’s more than clear that a majority of Council either doesn’t understand, or refuses to believe, that growth in the bus would come at the expense of local businesses.  

See, about this simple truth – one that a bus marketing study expressly concedes –  The Bus: Bad for Whitewater Now, Far Worse for Whitewater Later.

Of those who supported continued 2014 funding for the bus, every vote came from those who are affiliated with a major institution or company.  Not one favorable vote came from an independent business person who’s trying to make a go of a shop in Whitewater.

Not one.  

Now, admittedly, some of those who voted for the bus sit on boards and committees that pass regulations over small businesses, or on boards that presume to evaluate merchants’ needs, yet not one voting in favor works in that trade, or feels those pressures directly.

Neither the city manager, nor the majority at Council, nor outside bureaucrats experience those daily conditions of small business owners.    

Next: The People in the Room.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.4.13

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Good morning.

Wednesday brings an even chance of rain and a high of forty-nine to Whitewater.

On this day in 1780, George Washington’s cousin successfully tricks the enemy:

A force of Continental dragoons commanded by Colonel William Washington–General George Washington’s second cousin once removed–corners Loyalist Colonel Rowland Rugeley and his followers in Rugeley’s house and barn near Camden, South Carolina, on this day in 1780.

After nearly a year of brutal backcountry conflict between Washington and the fierce British commander Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton (who was infamous for Tarleton’s Quarter, the murder of colonial POWs on May 29, 1780 at Waxhaws), Washington had retreated to North Carolina the previous October. Commanded to return to the South Carolina theater by Brigadier General Daniel The Old Wagoner Morgan, Colonel Washington still lacked the proper artillery to dislodge the Loyalists. He told his cavalrymen to dismount and surround the barn. While out of Rugeley’s sight, Washington’s men fabricated a pine log to resemble a cannon.

This Quaker gun trick, named so because Quakers used it to be intimidating without breaching their pacifist vow of non-violence, worked beautifully. Washington faced the cannon toward the buildings in which the Loyalists had barricaded themselves and threatened bombardment if they did not surrender. Shortly after, Rugeley surrendered his entire force without a single shot being fired.

On 12.4.1933, Janesville won’t take the end of Prohibition for an answer:

1933 – Janesville Council Denies Prohibition End
On this date the Janesville Council drafted a “drastic liquor control law” that prohibited serving liquor. The law prohibited distilled spirits, but not beer, at bars, and limited liquor service to tables. Backrooms and “blinds” (closed booths) were also prohibited. The only place where packaged liquor was allowed to be sold was at municipal dispensaries. Further, bars were prohibited from selling packaged liquor. The next day, the city was uncommonly quiet as the 18th Amendment was repealed. For nearly 14 years, the 18th Amendment (the Prohibition Amendment), outlawed the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages within the U.S. [Source: Janesville Gazette, December 5, 1933, p.1]]

Here’s Puzzability‘s Wednesday entry:

This Week’s Game — December 2-6
Festival of Lights
Here’s a bright idea for Hanukkah. The answer to each day’s trivia question this week is a two-word phrase, name, or title in which each word can be followed by the word “light” to make a compound word or phrase.
Example:
What was achieved for the first time by the Soviet Union in 1959 with an unmanned craft and by the U.S. 10 years later with a manned craft?
Answer:
Moon landing (moonlight, landing light)
What to Submit:
Submit the two-word trivia answer (as “Moon landing” in the example) for your answer.
Wednesday, December 4
In what TV talent show’s first episode, in 1983, was Sharon Stone crowned the first winning spokesmodel?

Education, Planning

Janesville Schools’ Reckless Plan

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Months ago, someone told me about a Janesville School District plan to charge teenage students from China and east Asia to live and attend classes in Janesville’s schools.

I thought it was a joke.  It took quite a bit to convince me that, actually, there was a nascent plan like this.  

It’s hard to fathom the level of recklessness in enticing these students, from half the way around the world, to live far from their families, at a paying rate, for the privilege of a Janesville education, when so little has been considered carefully.  

The truth is that desperate communities with middling leaders produce bad plans.  One sometimes sees places that will throw anything at the wall, hoping something will stick.

It’s worse, though, when the plans involve a project this difficult, this sketchy, and involving minor children.  

One may see more about the story online at the Gazette, in a story that – predictably – questions little.  

See, ‘Janesville international education plans taking shape’ @ http://gazettextra.com/article/20131201/ARTICLES/131129711/1059.  

Next up for that paper: Edsel taking shape as car of the century and Walter Mondale’s presidential campaign against Pres. Reagan shaping up nicely.

That the district would use its ‘chief information officer’ on a tour of east Asia (including ‘seven Cambodian schools in two days’) tells how shallow this effort is: selling paying families on the prospect of an education here without an established curriculum, without a plan for supervision of living conditions for minor children, etc. is astonishing. (Cambodian students, as it turns out, will not be initial prospects for the program.)  

About living conditions, one reads that 

Smiley [Robert Smiley, Janesville School District’s chief information officer] also met with a Chinese businessman who is remodeling the old Holiday Inn in South Beloit, Ill. Smiley said he had several meetings with Wang Zhibin and his investment group. Wang plans to house Chinese high school and college students in one wing of the hotel.

That’s not an established boarding program – it’s an ill-conceived idea that’s fraught with risks.

By the way, there’s sure to be a defensive, red-herring claim that to criticize the plan is to doubt the ability of Asian students to live in America –  nothing could be farther from the truth.  One shouldn’t doubt the ability of students from abroad (from Asia, Europe, etc.) – one should have every reason to question this slapdash domestic program to wring tuition from families with the hope of a high-quality American education.

There’s a reason that boarding programs are few and far between, and that the programs America has are often long-established and expensive: it’s very hard to do this safely and with academic success.