Good morning,

Whitewater’s Valentine’s Day forecast calls for a mostly sunny day, with highs in the mid-thirties.

In the City of Whitewater today, there will be a meeting of the Planning Commission at 6 p.m.  The agenda for that meeting is available online.   At 6:30 p.m., there will be a meeting of the Library Board.  That agenda is also online.

I’m overdue on posts about the mess that is tax incremental district 4.  I’ve not forgotten; it’s a work in progress (that is, the posts, not the district).

The Wisconsin Historical Society recalls that today is a memorable day in Wisconsin, American, and world history:

1819 – Typewriter Inventor Born

On this date the inventor of the modern typewriter, C. Latham Sholes, was born. Sholes moved to Wisconsin as a child and lived in Green Bay, Kenosha, and Milwaukee. In 1867, in Milwaukee, he presented his first model for the modern typewriter and patents for the device were taken out in 1868. Sholes took the advice of many mechanical experts, including Thomas Edison, and so claims that he was the sole inventor of the typewriter have often been disputed. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Homes, pg 316-328]

Good morning,

Today’s forecast calls for a high of twenty-six, with a chance of snow in the afternoon.

In Wisconsin history on this day, the Wisconsin Historical Society recalls a shooting…in the territorial legislature:

1842 – Shooting in the Legislature

On this date the Territorial Legislature of Wisconsin met in Madison, only to be interrupted by the shooting of one member by another. The legislature was debating the appointment of Enos S. Baker for sheriff of Grant County when Charles Arndt made a sarcastic remark about Baker’s colleague, James Vineyard. After an uproar, adjournment was declared and when Arndt approached Vineyard’s desk, a fight broke out during which Vineyard drew his revolver and shot Arndt. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes]

Arndt died within several minutes of being shot.

I’ve written before about bed bugs (Bed Bug Registry – Check Apartments and Hotels Across North America!), but not, I think, about fleas.  I’ll correct that omission with reference to a story at Wired, entitled, Fleas Jump Using Spring-Loaded Feet.  As it happens, they’re great jumpers:

Using new tools like high-speed video, researchers with the University of Cambridge in England have shown that fleas take off from their tibia and tarsi — the insect equivalent of feet — and not their trochantera, or knees. The researchers report their conclusion in the March 1 Journal of Experimental Biology.

Regardless of how fleas do it, the insects have always been famous jumpers, says study co-author Gregory Sutton. “There are even fairy tales that talk about how magnificent fleas are at jumping,” he says. And it’s not surprising: Fleas jump far. Some fleas — only a few millimeters long — can jump well over 10 centimeters, according to one study.

Watch them in action:

Good morning,

It’s a sunny day for Whitewater, with a predicted high temperature of eleven degrees.

Today is a dark day in Wisconsin history. The Wisconsin Historical Society remembers that, in

1763 – Treaty of Paris Cede[d] Wisconsin to England

On this date the Treaty of Paris ceded formerly French-controlled land, including the Wisconsin region, to England. [Source: Avalon Project at Yale University]

ScienceNews.org offers, in its News in Brief section, something about the subtle power of cell phones — frequent usage causes people to associate numbers with the corresponding letters of a keyboard:

5683 is all you need

Cell phones send messages on the sly — to their owners. People who frequently call and text others with these devices unthinkingly associate keyboard numbers with their accompanying letters, says psychologist Sascha Topolinski of the University of Wurzburg in Germany. Cell slingers recognize words faster after having dialed numbers that correspond to those words, such as 5683 for LOVE, she reports in an upcoming Psychological Science. In other experiments, cell users preferred dialing numbers that denoted positive words (37326 for DREAM) over numbers signifying negative words (75463 for SLIME) and preferred companies with business-related phone numbers, such as LOVE for a dating agency, over companies without them — a result with marketing implications. —Bruce Bower