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Daily Bread for 4.1.24: The Changing University Landscape

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with afternoon rain and a high of 47. Sunrise is 6:35 and sunset 7:31 for 12h 45m 13s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 58.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Equal Opportunities Commission meets at 5 PM, and the Whitewater Common Council holds a special session at 6:30 PM. 

On this day in 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak found Apple Computer, Inc.

One could say that, in a dynamic society like America’s, every generation’s university landscape is changed from the generation before. In our time, one of those changes is online university education. Earlier this winter, Corrinne Hess reported Universities of Wisconsin launch website to market online degrees (‘Wisconsin Online aims to make it easier for students to register for online classes’): 

On Feb. 1, the system launched Wisconsin Online at online.wisconsin.edu. The website provides access and information about the UW’s 10 associate, 99 bachelor’s and 95 master’s degree programs.

“We have taken a more deliberate approach to this,” Rothman told WPR. “Our role is to use the trusted brands as the Universities of Wisconsin to offer a world class, online educational program.”

The UW has 18,000 “traditional” students who have now gone fully online, Rothman said. 

But the new online portal is also focused on the more than 700,000 people in Wisconsin who have some college credit who now want to finish their degree online, Rothman said. 

“We have a number of students who also want to get their MBA this way,” Rothman said. “So it is simply a way to further address and meet the students where their needs are. “

These programs expand the reach of college education while requiring communities like Whitewater’s to balance new online opportunities with in-person instruction. Successful campus communities will have to advance on both fronts. 

What’s in the night sky | April 2024:

America, Daily Bread, Space, Technology

Daily Bread for 3.14.24: SpaceX’s Third Starship Launch

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 Good morning.

Thursday, Pi Day, in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 50. Sunrise is 7:05 and sunset 7:01 for 11h 55m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 23.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1903, Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge becomes the first national (federal) wildlife refuge in the U.S.:

Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge is a United StatesNational Wildlife Refuge (NWR), and part of the Everglades Headwaters NWR complex, located just off the western coast of North Hutchinson Island in the Indian River Lagoon east of Sebastian, Florida. The refuge consists of a 3-acre (12,000 m2) island that includes an additional 2.5 acres (10,000 m2) of surrounding water and is located off the east coast of Florida of the Indian River Lagoon. Established by an executive order of President Theodore Roosevelt on March 14, 1903, Pelican Island was the first National wildlife refuge in the United States.[3] It was created to protect egretsand other birds from extinction through plume hunting. The oldest government wildlife refuge of any kind in North America is the Lake Merritt Bird Refuge in Oakland, California. Oakland Mayor Samuel Merritt declared it a wildlife refuge for migrating birds in 1869. In 1870, the state of California designated Lake Merritt a state game refuge.

Today has begun as a gain for American technology, as SpaceX has conducted its third launch of Starship. Kenneth Chang and Michael Roston report Here is what to know about Thursday’s SpaceX launch: 

SpaceX launched Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, on a journey part of the way around Earth. It was the rocket’s third test flight.

The nearly 400-foot-tall vehicle is being built to carry astronauts to the moon for NASA, and perhaps someday to send humans to Mars.

The vehicle flew twice last year from a SpaceX launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Both flights ended within minutes, resulting in explosive events, providing useful data for SpaceX’s engineers as they aim to complete a full mission.

During this third trip, SpaceX is hoping to achieve a better performance for the rocket, reaching higher altitudes and perhaps even speeds that would be capable of carrying the vehicle to orbit.

Here’s what else you need to know about the flight:

  • The launch began at 9:25 a.m. Eastern time, more than an hour into a 110-minute launch window that started at 8 a.m. Later starts during test flights are not uncommon. The company said it needed to clear boats from a safety zone in the Gulf of Mexico, and weather conditions did not prevent a liftoff.

….

  • The Starship system consists of two stages — the Super Heavy rocket booster and the upper-stage spacecraft, which is also called Starship. The company intends both to be fully reusable in the future.

The ship was likely lost well after launch, but for today, it was the launch and higher altitude that mattered (as they were the key hurdles of this phase of the project). 

Tornado in northeast Kansas captured on video: 

Daily Bread, Elections, Fashion, Technology, US Senate Race 2024, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.21.24: SHOCKING: WISGOP SCIENTISTS INVENT TIME MACHINE

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 Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 56. Sunrise is 6:42 and sunset 5:34 for 10h 52m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM. 

On this day in 1918, the last Carolina parakeet dies in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo.

By Huub Veldhuijzen van Zanten/Naturalis Biodiversity Center, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45550593

  All my life, I’ve thought that stories of time machines were mere fantasies. How wrong I’ve been.

As it turns out, WISGOP scientists likely have invented a working time machine: 

After watching the Eric Hovde campaign video, the first explanation1 for his appearance and attire is that WISGOP scientists have, in fact, found a way to travel from 2024 back to 1974, to study that earlier era’s aesthetic. 

Astonishing. 

Hovde’s style (and background or politics) isn’t going to work in present-day Wisconsin, but this WISGOP technological advance is impressive nonetheless.

1. The second explanation, far less savory, is that Hovde’s campaign team has been studying old 8mm amateur porn films. See Boogie Nights. 

Horse seen running down Interstate 95 in Philadelphia:

City, Culture, Daily Bread, Local Government, School District, Technology

Daily Bread for 1.9.24: Awry Comes at You Fast

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 Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be snowy with a high of 34. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset 4:39 for 9h 15m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 4.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s city hall and schools are closed today. Play responsibly. 

On this day in 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the original iPhone at a Macworld keynote in San Francisco.

Yesterday’s post included a video of the successful launch of a private lunar lander (see US firm launches moon lander to space).  Not long afterward, that mission went awry. Kenneth Chang reports American Company’s Spacecraft Malfunctions on Its Way to the Moon (‘After a flawless launch to orbit, the privately built robotic Peregrine lander is unlikely to reach the lunar surface because of a failure in its propulsion system’): 

The first NASA-financed commercial mission to send a robotic spacecraft to the surface of the moon will most likely not be able to make it there.

The lunar lander, named Peregrine and built by Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh, encountered problems shortly after it lifted off early Monday morning from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The launch of the rocket, a brand-new design named Vulcan, was flawless, successfully sending Peregrine on its journey.

But a failure in the lander’s propulsion system depleted its propellant and most likely ended the mission’s original lunar ambitions.

“The team is working to try and stabilize the loss, but given the situation, we have prioritized maximizing the science and data we can capture,” Astrobotic said in a statement. “We are currently assessing what alternative mission profiles may be feasible at this time.”

And there we are: awry comes at you fast. Foresight allows the avoidance of many problems, yet not all. For the unavoidable remainder, it’s “what alternative mission profiles may be feasible at this time.” 

Whitewater, historically, has never been adept at either foresight or alternative missions. 

We can do much better. 

South Korea passes bill to ban dog meat industry: 

Architecture, Daily Bread, Technology

Daily Bread for 12.30.23: How a Robot is Carving a Cathedral

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 Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 37. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:30 for 9h 04m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 87.5% of its visible disk illuminated. 

On this day in 1916, Russian mystic and advisor to the Tsar Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin is murdered by a loyalist group led by Prince Felix Yusupov.

  A robot is carving a cathedral. Here’s how: 

The Brothers Who Invented a Formula 1… for Marbles:

Cats, Science/Nature, Technology

Friday Catblogging: Space-Transmission Cat

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??Justine McDaniel reports Taters the cat stars in NASA’s first video streamed from deep space: On the path to Mars, nearly 19 million miles from Earth, Taters the cat got his big break. The orange tabby starred in the first video streamed from deep space, a successful NASA experiment that marked a milestone for advancing…

Daily Bread, Federal Government, Government Spending, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Madison, Milwaukee, Technology, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 8.17.23: Well, Possibly in Madison with Lots of Federal Money

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Good morning. Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 73. Sunrise is 6:04 AM and sunset 7:53 PM for 13h 49m 16s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.2% of its visible disk illuminated.   Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM. On this day in 1978,…