Good morning.
There’s a chance of snow today, and a high of thirty-seven, for Whitewater’s forecast.
One often hears that Wisconsin’s current politics is too incendiary, too extreme, etc. The Wisconsin Historical Society recalls a day far worse, on this day in 1862:
1862 – Draft Riot of 1862
On this date angry citizens protesting a War Department order for 300,000 additional troops, rioted in Port Washington, Ozaukee County. As county draft commissioner William A. Pors drew the first name, cannon fire resounded and a mob of over 1,000 angry citizens wielding clubs and bricks and carrying banners scrawled with the words “No Draft!” marched through the streets. The mob stormed the city destroying buildings, setting fires, and gutting the interior of homes and shops. Troops were brought in the next day to quell the violence. The Ozaukee rioters were captured and remained prisoners at Camp Randall for about a year before they were finally released. In all, more than a half-dozen homes were damaged and dozens of citizens were injured. [Source: Ozaukee Country Wisconsin]
We’ve had tens of thousands of protesters at the Capitol building, week after week, with nowhere near these sort of problems from a single day in 1862. (Of that day in 1862: opposition to the draft doesn’t and couldn’t justify protesters’ destruction of other people’s homes, or injuries to others.)
Here’s Google’s puzzle for the day: “Who sent the first known letter from the New World to the Old World?” It’s simpler than some of the other puzzles, with fewer discrete steps to get the answer. But as it lacks those steps, it’s less inviting, lacking a point-of-entry that a three-step problem, for example, would have. This is seemingly closer to all-or-nothing, leaving the elements of a solution less pronounced.
What’s happened to marketing, and really to ordinary sensibility, in America? I saw a web advertisement last night for pants, from bonobos.com. (I’m not a customer, and was unfamiliar with the company until last night.) Here’s the ad –
The ad begins by telling me that I “need these pants.” No, I don’t. I might want them — although that’s not really true, either — but I don’t need them. I have pants now, and for ordinary occasions L.L. Bean will supply me with more as replacements.
As for needs, rather than hopes or desires, one should have as few as possible. Among them, a particular brand of trousers should appear nowhere.
But they’re sure that I should need them, because they quote a merchant as proudly declaring these are the “holy grail of pants.” Are you kidding? I could understand someone referring to the holy grail of cancer research, for example, but hardly the holy grail of pants.
Perhaps these are the greatest pants ever made, but one of the silliest ad campaigns persuades me that they’re neither something I need nor want.
Of bonobos, the genuine articles themselves neither want nor need pants at all:
