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Birds, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.21.21: Roadrunner Makes Trip from Nevada to Maine

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 50.  Sunrise is 6:55 AM and sunset 4:26 PM for 9h 30m 49s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 95.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1877,  Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record and play sound.

Claudia Chiappa and Dustin Wlodkowski  report Wily Roadrunner Visits Maine By Hitching Ride in Moving Van From Las Vegas:

Even the fastest birds need to hitch a ride sometimes, it seems.

A curious roadrunner was found in a moving van that had traveled from Las Vegas to Westbrook, Maine, this weekend, police said.

A surprised father and his son spotted the bird — the one made famous by the coyote-evading Looney Tunes cartoon — in the back of their van on Saturday while unloading it at a storage facility after a four-day, cross-country trip in Nevada, according to Avian Haven, a nonprofit wild bird rehabilitation center in Maine.

After finding the surprise passenger, the men contacted the Westbrook Maine Police Department and, eventually, reached wildlife experts at Avian Haven. A volunteer from the area was able to catch the elusive roadrunner with help from the family that had inadvertently transported it, and it was moved to the center.

The roadrunner is now safe and waiting to be returned to its original home. The bird was in “remarkably good shape for having been confined in the van for four days,” officials from the center said in a Facebook post.

The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and the Arizona Game and Fish Department have been communicating about possible transfer plans, The Portland Press Herald reported on Monday.

As of Thursday, arrangements were still being made for what will likely be a direct air trip from Logan airport in Boston to Las Vegas.

“The shorter amount of time a bird is on an airline, the better,” said Doug Nielsen, a conservation education supervisor with the Nevada Department of Wildlife explaining that there will be coordination between his agency, the State of Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Sometimes a roadrunner story is only a roadrunner story…

The Best Pumpkin Pie Recipe | Melissa Clark:

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City, Film

Film: Tuesday, November 23, 1 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Home for the Holidays

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Tuesday, November 23rd at 1 PM, there will be a showing of Home for the Holidays @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Comedy/Drama/Romance

1 hour, 43 minutes

Rated PG-13 (1995)

A requested film for the Thanksgiving season. A forty-year-old single woman flies home to spend Thanksgiving with her wild, wacky, dysfunctional family. Starring Holly Hunter, Anne Bancroft, Robert Downey, Jr., Charles Durning, Dylan McDermott, and Geraldine Chaplin. Directed by Jodie Foster.

One can find more information about Home for the Holidays at the Internet Movie Database.

Daily Bread, Local Government, Politics

Daily Bread for 11.20.21: ‘Polarization’ Is Evasion

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 47.  Sunrise is 6:54 AM and sunset 4:27 PM for 9h 32m 42s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1859, Milwaukee sees its first baseball game:

An impromptu game of base ball , as it was spelled in the early years, was played by two teams of seven at the Milwaukee Fair Ground. The game was organized by Rufus King, publisher of the Milwaukee Sentinel, and is believed to have been the first baseball game played in Milwaukee. In spite of cold weather, two more games were played in December, and by April 1860 the Milwaukee Base Ball Club was organized. View early baseball photographs at Wisconsin Historical Images, and read about baseball’s first decades in Wisconsin at Turning Points in Wisconsin.

 Jennifer Rubin writes It’s not ‘polarization.’ We suffer from Republican radicalization:

You know the argument: America is divided into warring camps. The center has collapsed. Compromise is impossible. We have become uncivil and angry.

While it’s true that the country is more deeply divided along partisan lines than it has been in the past, it is wrong to suggest a symmetrical devolution into irrational hatred. The polarization argument too often treats both sides as equally worthy of blame, characterizing the problem as a sort of free-floating affliction (e.g., “lack of trust”). This blurs the distinction between a Democratic Party that is marginally more progressive in policy positions than it was a decade ago, and a Republican Party that routinely lies, courts violence and seeks to define America as a White Christian nation.

The Republican Party’s tolerance of violence is not matched by Democrats. Nor is the Republican Party’s refusal to recognize the sanctity of elections. Democrats did not call the elections they lost in 2020 and 2021 “rigged,” nor are they seeking to replace nonpartisan election officials with partisan lawmakers. Republicans’ determination to change voting laws based on their insistence that Donald Trump won the 2020 election is without historical precedent.

….

Only one party conducts fake election audits, habitually relies on conspiracy theories and wants to limit access to the ballot. A recent study from the libertarian think tank R Street found: “In Republican states, legislation tended to scale back the availability of mail-in voting and ballot drop boxes and to provide more uniform, if not shorter, early voting windows. Meanwhile, in Democratic states, legislators sought to increase the availability of early voting not only by expanded voting windows but also by instating universal vote-by-mail.”

Only one party overwhelmingly refused to participate in a bipartisan investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Only one party tolerates and defends House members who resort to violent imagery and harass fellow lawmakers. Talk of “secession” comes from only one party. Only one party is turning a vigilante who killed two people and seriously injured another into a folk hero. Only one party rises in defense of parents publicly threatening school boards. Only one party has taken to defending book-banning and book-burning. Governors of only one party are suing private companies and localities that follow coronavirus guidelines.

Yes.

It’s sometimes journalists, but not merely journalists, who advance these sanitizing claims of polarization. At the local level, officials either launder away populists’ false claims and malevolent ambitions as mere ‘differences of opinion’ or pretend there’s ‘nothing to see here.’

Our forefathers (among those of us whose families were on the right side of these issues) did not think that the British, Know Nothings, Confederates, Klan, and Bund were merely polarizing.  They rightly saw that those movements were blameworthy.

See Not Only in Washington, and Not Only Journalists (‘on local boards, councils, and commissions, how many elected and appointed officials speak confidently in defense of liberal democracy? In Whitewater, Wisconsin and so many nearby towns, too many of those who took office democratically, and too many of those who were appointed to prominent positions under the law, are silent in the face of challenges to democracy and the rule of law’).

Here in Whitewater, council members who take an oath to uphold the constitutional order find it easier to pass an ordinance banning residents from feeding, in their own yards, even a single peanut to a single squirrel than to consider a confident resolution in defense of our liberal democratic tradition.

Local such as this is merely vacuous.

The Best Pecan Pie Recipe | Melissa Clark:

Daily Bread, Elections, Law, Republicans, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 11.19.21: The WISGOP Push to Take Over the State’s Elections

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 39.  Sunrise is 6:53 AM and sunset 4:27 PM for 9h 34m 38s of daytime.  The moon is full with all of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1863, Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication ceremony for the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

 Writing in the New York Times, Reid Epstein reports Wisconsin Republicans Push to Take Over the State’s Elections:

The Republican effort — broader and more forceful than that in any other state where allies of former President Donald J. Trump are trying to overhaul elections — takes direct aim at the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, an agency Republicans created half a decade ago that has been under attack since the chaotic aftermath of last year’s election.

The firestorm picked up late last month after a long-awaited reporton the 2020 results that was ordered by Republican state legislators found no evidence of fraud but made dozens of suggestions for the election commission and the G.O.P.-led Legislature, turbocharging Republican demands for more control of elections.

Then the Trump-aligned sheriff of Racine County, the state’s fifth most populous county, recommended felony charges against five of the six members of the election commission for guidance they had given to municipal clerks early in the pandemic. The Republican majority leader of the State Senate later seemed to give a green light to that proposal, saying that “prosecutors around the state”should determine whether to bring charges.

And last week, Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican, said that G.O.P. state lawmakers should unilaterally assert control of federal elections, claiming that they had the authority to do so even if Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, stood in their way — an extraordinary legal argument debunked by a 1932 Supreme Court decision and a 1964 ruling from the Wisconsin Supreme Court. His suggestion was nonetheless echoed by Michael Gableman, a conservative former State Supreme Court justice who is conducting the Legislature’s election inquiry.

Epstein goes on to report why an effort like this matters to the GOP nationwide:

“In Wisconsin we’re heading toward a showdown over the meaning of the clause that says state legislatures should set the time, manner and place of elections,” said Kevin J. Kennedy, who spent 34 years as Wisconsin’s chief election officer before Republicans eliminated his agency and replaced it with the elections commission in 2016. “If not in Wisconsin, in some other state they’re going to push this and try to get a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on this.”

The WISGOP efforts in Wisconsin may not advance, but GOP efforts somewhere will advance, in hope of a U.S. Supreme Court decision placing federal elections wholly in the hands of GOP-controlled state legislatures eager to establish time, place, and manner of elections to their liking.

See also Ron Johnson Wants It All.

The Best Apple Pie Recipe | Melissa Clark:

Daily Bread, Sports, University

Daily Bread for 11.18.21: UW-Whitewater resumes annual wheelchair basketball tournament

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 35.  Sunrise is 6:51 AM and sunset 4:28 PM for 9h 36m 37s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 99.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s CDA meets at 5:30 PM.

 On this day in 1928, Walt Disney Studio releases the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse.

 Megan Hart reports Dominant wheelchair basketball teams back in action at UW-Whitewater: ‘They turn out Paralympic athletes like crazy’:

When the United States won gold in men’s wheelchair basketball at the Tokyo Paralympics this year, Wisconsin native Christina Schwab was on the sidelines as a coach.

For the three-time Paralympic gold medalist, it was her first time coaching internationally.

“It opened my eyes to so many things that happen behind the scenes that you don’t see when you’re an athlete, and it also gave me the opportunity to learn from some really successful coaches and some really successful athletes,” she said.

She brought those lessons back to the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where she coaches the women’s wheelchair basketball squad. Schwab isn’t an alum, but she credits UW-Whitewater for much of her own success as an athlete and coach. When she was younger, Schwab attended camps at UW-Whitewater and later used its facilities for training. And she’s not the only successful Paralympian with ties to the school.

There were five former UW-Whitewater players on the Team USA squad Schwab coached in Tokyo. Between men and women, the school has won 16 intercollegiate titles in the sport since 1982. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign may be the only other program that boasts a longer history of dominance in the sport.

A few teams might stand out when you think about the most successful programs in sports: the New York Yankees, the Green Bay Packers, the U.S. women’s national soccer team. UW-Whitewater wheelchair basketball could easily be added to the list.

And the teams are back in action after almost two years off due to COVID-19.

So very well done.

Cows rescued by jet ski after flooding in Canada:

Around 50 cows stranded on a farm in British Colombia have been rescued by farmers and volunteers using jet skis and boats. It comes after a huge storm hit the Pacific Northwest, destroying highways and leaving tens of thousands of people in Canada and the US without power. At least one person has been killed and several more are feared dead.

Daily Bread, Economy

Daily Bread for 11.17.21: On Inflation, the Present Isn’t the Future

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 51.  Sunrise is 6:50 AM and sunset 4:29 PM for 9h 38m 38s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 96.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

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

 On this day in 1869 in Egypt, the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is inaugurated.

 Wendy Edelberg writes What does current inflation tell us about the future?:

What signal should we be taking from current inflation for future inflation? The answer: some signal, but not a lot. To be sure, inflation is running high (figure 1); and, after excluding the typically volatile categories of food and energy prices, is running higher than it has been in decades. But because the factors that are leading to inflation are pandemic-related and therefore temporary, the current trend does not forecast the future.

Figure 1

….

the primary contributor to the recent spike in inflation is core goods. The strength in real consumer spending (shown in figure 4a) has reflected a surge in spending on consumer goods (shown in figure 4b). Real goods spending is currently about 15 percent higher than it was pre-pandemic, and there were a couple of months when it was 20 percent higher.

Figure 4

Are the trends described above a signal that we should expect continued extraordinary inflation for core goods—everything from automobiles to exercise mats—in the coming years? Three factors suggest no.

  • First, the surge in spending on goods has put upward pressure on prices as suppliers have been unable to keep up with demand. Suppliers have strong incentives to iron out issues with the supply chain to get more product onto shelves; in addition, the problems with the supply chain that owe more directly to the pandemic will ebb as the pandemic is brought under control globally.
  • Second, that surge in goods spending is no doubt temporary because households—as the pandemic recedes—will rebalance consumer spending toward services, which has been unusually depressed (figure 4c).
  • Third, the fiscal support to households that has helped to finance the surge in goods spending has largely waned.

In contrast to spending on consumer goods, spending on services remains below its pre-pandemic peak. This pattern is a significant departure from previous business cycles where services were relatively unaffected.

There’s no suggestion, of course, that inflation is a benefit; it’s simply that inflation will not become a persistent detriment.

Fennec fox brothers Ollie and Artie make themselves at home at the Milwaukee County Zoo:

Constitution, Daily Bread, Law, Liberal Democracy, Local Government, Politics

Daily Bread for 11.16.21: Not Only in Washington, and Not Only Journalists

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 50.  Sunrise is 6:49 AM and sunset 4:30 PM for 9h 40m 41s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

 The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets at 9 AM and the Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

 On this day in 1532, Francisco Pizarro and his men capture Inca Emperor Atahualpa at the Battle of Cajamarca.

 Jennifer Rubin writes Journalists also have an obligation to fix democracy:

Looking back on the first 10 months of Joe Biden’s presidency, we see little evidence the media has examined its own role in Republicans’ assault on democracy. Indeed, one could argue mainstream media outlets have been complicit in the current crisis of democracy. The trivialization of coverage, default to false equivalency, amplification of GOP spin and habitual treatment of Republicans’ conduct as within the normal boundaries of politics have serious implications for a democracy that relies on an informed citizenry.

Journalism professor and media critic Jay Rosen observes that “the incremental coverage, the focus on the inside game, the notion of tactics and strategy, and the joining up of the political class with the information junkies” does little to inform voters about major pieces of legislation. We get nonstop coverage of the “sausage making” but little about the content of bills that cost trillions. We hear incessant chatter about the filibuster but little examination of Senate Democrats’ compromise voting-rights plan, while Republicans are rarely grilled as to the basis for their objections to common-sense measures (e.g. enhancing penalties for threats to election officials, requiring a paper audit trail, limiting wait times to 30 minutes).

Rubin is right, of course. There is a moral obligation to defend the constitutional order. That obligation extends beyond the District of Columbia, and beyond journalism.

And yet, and yet, on local boards, councils, and commissions, how many elected and appointed officials speak confidently in defense of liberal democracy?  In Whitewater, Wisconsin and so many nearby towns, too many of those who took office democratically, and too many of those who were appointed to prominent positions under the law, are silent in the face of challenges to democracy and the rule of law.  (There are a few notable and worthy exceptions, but they are notable and worthy as exceptions from the rest.)

The diffident majority of these officials will not change; if they’ll not defend now, then they never will.

A community that wishes to defend itself will have to rely on its own lawful efforts of advocacy and organization.

Daredevil Stands Atop 13,000-ft Hot Air Balloon:

Business, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.15.21: Washington, D.C. Is About to Look Nicer

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 37.  Sunrise is 6:48 AM and sunset 4:31 PM for 9h 42m 48s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 86.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM.

 On this day in 1864, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman begins Sherman’s March to the Sea.

Stephanie Mencimer writes Bye Bye, Trump Hotel:

It turns out not even Rudy Giuliani’s bar tab could save the Trump International Hotel. The Trump Organization lost at least $70 million since its opening in 2016, even as the grand hotel became a fixture of Trump-era Washington, a place where the president’s loyalists and sycophants alike could gather in a cozy bubble safely away from the fake news and impeachment managers and sip champagne from a spoon and imbibe cocktails starting at $24 a pop.

The Trump family has been threatening to sell it for the past few years, and now it seems they finally have: The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that a Miami-based investment firm, CGI Merchant Group, intends to assume the lease with the federal government for $375 million and turn the Trump Hotel into a Waldorf Astoria.

The hotel had become a liability for a family company that no longer had a steady stream of lobbyists and influence-seekers willing to pay inflated prices for rooms in a hotel that many businesses wouldn’t come near because of the association with Trump. By far one of the former president’s biggest conflicts of interest—he refused to relinquish control of the company that ran it—Trump had won the contract to lease the former Old Post Office Pavilion from the federal government by wildly overpaying, and then sinking $200 million into renovations, paid for with $170 million borrowed from Deutsche Bank. That loan, and others, comes due in 2024.

When a new owner gets the keys to the hotel, the first order of business should be (1) hiring an exterminator and (2) calling an exorcist.

For it all, the removal of the TRUMP name is sure to uplift both residents’ moods and nearby property values.

How Pine Nuts Are Harvested:

Daily Bread, Dog-Crap Company, Social Media

Daily Bread for 11.14.21: Facebook won’t let you control your own news feed

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see occasional flurries with a high of 37.  Sunrise is 6:46 AM and sunset 4:31 PM for 9h 44m 56s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 79.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1889, pioneering female journalist Nellie Bly (aka Elizabeth Cochrane) begins a successful attempt to travel around the world in less than 80 days. She completes the trip in 72 days.

Will Oremus reports Why Facebook won’t let you control your own news feed:

A growing number of lawmakers in both parties now think users should have an option to disable such automated ranking systems — for good. A bill introduced in the House of Representatives this week would require social media companies to offer a version of their services that doesn’t rely on opaque algorithms to decide what users see. It joins a similar bill in the Senate. Both are sponsored by high-ranking members of both parties, giving the legislation a viable path to become law. (They are distinct from previous proposals that seek to regulate algorithms through other means, such as by allowing platforms to be sued when they amplify illegal content.)

Lawmakers’ latest idea to fix Facebook: Regulate the algorithm

The political push raises an old question for Facebook: Why not just give users the power to turn off their feed ranking algorithms voluntarily? Would letting users opt to see every post from the people they follow, in chronological order, be so bad?

The documents suggest that Facebook’s defense of algorithmic rankings stems not only from its business interests, but from a paternalistic conviction, backed by data, that its sophisticated personalization software knows what users want better than the users themselves. It’s a view that likely extends beyond Facebook: Rivals such as Twitter, TikTok and YouTube rely heavily on automated content recommendation systems, as does Facebook’s corporate sibling Instagram.

But critics say this view misses something important: the value of giving users more agency over their information diet.

Since 2009, three years after it launched the news feed, Facebook has used software that predicts which posts each user will find most interesting and places those at the top of their feeds while burying others. That system, which has evolved in complexity to take in as many as 10,000 pieces of information about each post, has fueled the news feed’s growth into a dominant information source.

The proliferation of false information, conspiracy theories and partisan propaganda on Facebook and other social networks has led some to wonder whether we wouldn’t all be better off with a simpler, older system: one that simply shows people all the messages, pictures and videos from everyone they follow, in the order they were posted. That was more or less how Instagram worked until 2016, and Twitter until 2017. But Facebook has long resisted it.

This libertarian opposes a legislative effort to restrict Facebook’s use of its algorithmic ranking. If Facebookers don’t like the algorithm, it is they — not the government — who should pressure the company to change its practices. If Facebook won’t change, disappointed users should quit Facebook. After all, earlier Facebook Revelations Show a What a Dog-Crap Company It Is.

 The Inspired by Iceland tourism site has released a parody, entitled Introducing the Icelandverse, of Facebook CEO Mark Zukerberg’s grand ambitions (he’s looking to create a ‘metaverse‘) and awkward manner:

City, Culture, Daily Bread, Toxic Positivity, Tragic Optimism

Daily Bread for 11.13.21: Toxic Positivity Is Worse than Annoying as Public Policy

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 39.  Sunrise is 6:45 AM and sunset 4:32 PM for 9h 47m 07s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 70.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1940, Walt Disney’s animated musical film Fantasia is first released, on the first night of a roadshow at New York’s Broadway Theatre.

Elizabeth Bernstein, writing in the Wall Street Journal, rightly observes (focusing on a personal context) that Toxic Positivity Is Very Real, and Very Annoying:

Yes, cultivating a positive mindset is a powerful coping mechanism, especially in tough times. But positivity needs to be rooted in reality for it to be healthy and helpful.

“ Toxic positivity is positivity given in the wrong way, in the wrong dose, at the wrong time,” says David Kessler, a grief expert and the author of six books about grief, including his latest, “Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief.”

….

“It’s a form of gaslighting,” says Susan David, a psychologist and consultant at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts and the author of “Emotional Agility.” “You basically are saying to someone that my comfort in this situation is more important than your reality.”

….

How can we avoid forced positivity, to better help ourselves or someone else who is down?

Start by recognizing that it is different from hope or optimism. Those emotions are rooted in reality, Dr. David says, while toxic positivity is a denial of it.

Bernstein is writing of toxic positivity as a response to illness, but it’s worse than annoying as a public policy position: like boosterism (accentuating the positive to spur business development), toxic positivity as a public policy position overlooks human need (e.g., injury, poverty) for the sake of a happy narrative (that benefits officials’ self-promoting claims).

See Boosterism’s Cousin, Toxic Positivity and Tragic Optimism as an Alternative to Toxic Positivity (“Tragic optimism involves the search for meaning amid the inevitable tragedies of human existence, something far more practical and realistic….people can grow in many ways from difficult times—including having a greater appreciation of one’s life and relationships, as well as increased compassion, altruism, purpose, utilization of personal strengths, spiritual development, and creativity. Importantly, it’s not the traumatic event itself that leads to growth…but rather how the event is processed, the changes in worldview that result from the event, and the active search for meaning that people undertake during and after it.”)

In a place with genuine needs, toxic positivity is a lie. The danger: proponents of toxic positivity will first overlook these needs, but later conceal these needs.

 Something healthfully positive — Endangered Amur Leopard Cub Makes Debut at Zoo:

Daily Bread, Employment, University, UW Madison, UW System, Vaccines

Daily Bread for 11.12.21: UW-Madison Charts the Right Course on Vaccination

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will see scattered of showers of rain or snow with a high of 39.  Sunrise is 6:44 AM and sunset 4:33 PM for 9h 49m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 60.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day, in 1970, the Oregon Highway Commission decides to blow up a dead, beached whale in Florence, Oregon:

Kelly Meyerhofer reports UW-Madison tells all employees to get vaccinated, citing Biden’s federal vaccine mandate:

UW-Madison told its employees on Thursday that they must be vaccinated by early 2022 to comply with a vaccine mandate for federal contractors.

The university said the order applies to all workers, including student employees, those working remotely from home and part-time workers. About 95% of employees are already fully vaccinated.

Roughly 1,800 UW-Madison employees have not yet provided proof of vaccination, university spokesperson Meredith McGlone said.

The University of Wisconsin System last month said it would comply with President Joe Biden’s executive order to avoid jeopardizing millions of dollars in federal contracts. But officials didn’t respond to questions about how broadly it interpreted the order and whether it covered all campuses.

Many other colleges across the country have cited the federal order when announcing campuswide worker vaccination requirements, even in some conservative states where mandates draw fierce opposition. At least a handful of schools, however, are narrowly interpreting the order by assessing which employees are involved in federal contract work.

Tommy Thompson, the interim president for the System, later said that four of the 13 campuses have federal contracts: Milwaukee, Madison, Stevens Point and Superior.

Under a draft version of “vaccination policy concept” paper the System sent to university leaders last week, other campuses could impose an employee mandate if the chancellor determines that the university may seek future federal contracting opportunities. The draft paper also appeared to allow campuses with federal contracts to either narrowly or broadly interpret the federal order.

Asked whether the System is leaving it up to campuses to decide if and how the order applies to them, System spokesperson Mark Pitsch said there’s no new System policy or guidance. Details of the order remain “subject to change” and “the situation is fluid.” He said each university has unique circumstances, and individual chancellors are responding to those circumstances.

The vaccination deadline is Jan. 4. Employees may request a medical or religious exemption.

While UW-Whitewater is not among the universities Thompson cited as receiving federal contracts, every school in the UW System should adopt the same mandate on vaccines.

See also Employers Have Rights — and Obligations to Workplace Safety and Immunization Mandates Are Right and Effective.

Building homes with hemp:

Animation, Cats

Friday Catblogging: A Computer-Animated Cat from 1968

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Over at BoingBoing, one reads that “Kitty” is an early realistic computer animation from 1968:

Kitty is an early computer animation, created by a group of Soviet physicists and mathematicians in 1968. It was made on a BESM-4 computer. The computer used alphabetical characters (similar to ASCII art) to make the images, transferred the resulting animation to a printer, and then a camera photographed the animation frames to create the video. This could possibly be the world’s first computer-generated video. I can’t get over how cool this cat looks. I want it on a t-shirt!

In 1968 a group of Soviet physicists and mathematicians with N.Konstantinov as its head created a mathematical model for the motion of a cat. On a BESM-4 computer they devised a program for solving the ordinary differential equations for this model. The Computer printed hundreds of frames on paper using alphabet symbols that were later filmed in sequence thus creating the first realistic computer animation of a character, a walking cat [Kitty (1968) – Computer Animation history-CGI!]