Good morning.

Snow’s in the forecast for Whitewater, with one to three inches expected during the day.  In Athens, Georgia, it will be a day of showers with a high temperature of sixty-three.

In the city today, there’s a Community Development Authority at 4:30 PM. The agenda is available online, and the meeting resumes – in both closed and open sessions – the CDA’s search for a director.

Later, at 6:30 PM, Common Council will meet.

On this day in 1900

Female Cotton Mill Workers Strike

On this date 100 female employees of the Monterey mill, affiliated with the Janesville Cotton Mills, went on strike for higher wages. According to local sources, a committee of four “good-looking young ladies” was appointed to negotiate with management. Doing piece work, the women earned only $40 a month. The company said the women “don’t know how good they’ve got it…because they are paid more than at other local cotton mills and as well as some men with families.” The women argued their monthly pay only averaged $20. Within three days, all the women were hired to work by tobacco warehouses. The Monterey mill was one of three Janesville cotton mills in operation at the turn of the century. [Source: Janesville Gazette]

Via Wisconsin Historical Society.

Google’s puzzle for today asks “Who was the first American president known to have sworn his oath of office on a book other than the Bible?”

Good morning.

A chance of rain waits for Whitewater today, with a high temperature of thirty-six. In Los Angeles, the forecast calls for dense fog and a high of sixty-one.

It’s King day today, and the Washington Post has welcome news that the federal government will correct an inscription on Washington’s Martin Luther King Jr. statute to convey King’s intended meaning (rather than the careless and thoughtless result of others’ design).

Embedded below is a video commemorating the anniversary of a small but amazing achievement in amateur aviation: the launch of a Paper Airplane in Space (PARIS). Amazing and admirable —

Google’s puzzle for today asks about a bit of history: “You see sandbags piled at the junction of Friedrichstraße and Zimmerstraße. What symbol of the Cold War do they protect?”

Good morning.

It’s a snowy day in Whitewater.  This small city is lovely, surrounded by abundant natural beauty, but never lovelier than when covered in snow.  Whitewater will have a high temperature of twenty.  In Phoenix, sunny with a high near seventy.  I’ll take the snow.

The Wisconsin Historical Society recalls that on this day in 1922,

WHA Radio Founded

On this date the call letters of experimental station 9XM in Madison were replaced by WHA. This station dates back to 1917, making it “The oldest station in the nation.” [Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers, edited by Sarah Davis McBride]

That’s 970 AM in Madison, part of Wisconsin’s Public Radio Network.

So the theory of hot hands in sports may be true, after all: Big score for the hot hand.

Bruce Bower reports in ScienceNews that

Not only do top volleyball strikers go on scoring runs that can’t be chalked up to chance, but players and coaches notice when a player is on a hot streak and funnel the ball his or her way, say psychologist Markus Raab of German Sport University Cologne and his colleagues, who studied the hot-hand phenomenon by analyzing playoff game data from a German volleyball league.

That strategy usually works, because players who on average score on a high percentage of shots tend to get hot hands. So getting them the ball during a scoring streak boosts a team’s score, the researchers will report in an upcoming Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. This tactic backfires if a player with a low scoring average develops a hot hand and draws shots away from better scorers, the scientists hold.

Go with what’s working.

Amazing, but true: you can Get Photos Sent Directly From Mars to Your Phone.

Why not use your smartphone to get pictures from the surface of another planet?

The Mars Images app fetches images from the NASA Opportunity rover’s latest downlink as soon as they’re available. On Mars since 2004, Opportunity has far exceeded its planned mission life and is still making groundbreaking discoveries, such as the recent unambiguous evidence that water once flowed on Mars.

Developed by computer scientist Mark Powell of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the app also allows you to browse older photos from the rover’s archive. It is free and available for both iPhone/iPad and Android phones.

I’ve downloaded the app for the iPhone, and it’s astonishing.  The photos are black and white, and come with identifying information.

Here’s one of the millions-of-miles-away photos: