Five Artists, 250 Hours, Six Months to Create the Search Engine’s ‘Doodle’ Via A Holiday Card From Google – WSJ.com.

I’m not sure if he’s the world’s smartest canine, but he is amazing.

Like most people, with just one month left in the year, I find that there’s a long task list ahead. Even if not every task will be completed this month, it’s worth taking stock. At FREE WHITEWATER, there’s more to write about Whitewater’s Innovation Center, tax incremental financing, and officials’ use of email, among other…

Good morning, Whitewater’s forecast calls for a say of showers with a high temperature of sixty-two degrees. The City of Whitewater will hold a public meeting [Update] next week, 11/29 at 6 p.m. to present a draft of a lakes protection plan for Trippe and Cravath Lakes. The meeting agenda is available online. On this…

A lost cause even as a fixer-upper: A western Pennsylvania home will be demolished because it is so overrun with rats that they measure about a foot deep in spots….Officials will erect a perimeter around the home to try to prevent any rats that survive [extermination] from going into neighboring hopes. Best of luck –…

He was just borrowing them…. Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fge5ufo9CDY.

Basketball great LeBron James left Cleveland for Miami, and disappointed countless Cleveland residents (and other fans). Perhaps he thought that one of his sponsors, the multibillion-dollar Nike Corporation, could rehabilitate his image with a new advertising campaign. It’s not that easy. Modern media have empowered ordinary people, and they’re able to produce videos as powerful,…

If every flower carries a secret code (red roses stand for love, mums mean death) then carnations can probably be said to signify…cheap. Regarded as only suitable for sale in bodegas and grocery stores and primarily worn by pimply adolescents on middle-school dates, the carnation is a flower that is almost universally scorned. But dig…

A new ranking of the nations 400 biggest charities shows donations dropped by 11 percent overall last year as the Great Recession ended – the worst decline in 20 years since the Chronicle of Philanthropy began keeping a tally. See, Top 400 Charities See Billions Less In Donations, Biggest Percentage Drop Ever Recorded.

A link for word-game fans — “America’s most elegant, adventurous, and addictive crosswords and other word games.” See, WSJ Puzzles – WSJ.

It’s municipal budget season in Whitewater, Wisconsin, and in towns across America. Whitewater’s budget will be presented in stages, over more than one Common Council meeting. That’s been a practice here for years; this year is no different. I’ll offer a few remarks on a municipal budget, before commentary another time when the city’s proposed…

A spooky, Halloween-time treat — Best-selling author and Wisconsin’s leading authority on the paranormal Linda S. Godfrey will present a book talk and signing for her newly published book, “Haunted Wisconsin: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Badger State” at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 20 at the Lake Geneva Public Library…. Be prepared for Kenosha’s Headless…

The Whitewater-Area League of Women Voters’ October 2010 Newsletter is now available, and the latest issue includes a calendar of upcoming LWV events. The most-recent copy of the LWV newsletter is available as a link on my blogroll, and is embedded below, with coding through Google. Here’s a sampling of upcoming events for the Whitewater-Area…

Good morning, Whitewater’s forecast calls for a sunny day, with a high temperature of seventy-two degrees. The Wisconsin Historical Society recalls a odd moment in Wisconsin’s history, on this day in 1774: 1774 – Wisconsin Becomes Part of Quebec On this date Britain passed the Quebec Act, making Wisconsin part of the province of Quebec.…