Hundreds of costumed dogs descended on a New York City park Saturday for what was billed as the nation’s largest Halloween dog parade. Thousands of spectators mingled with about 300 four-legged contestants in Manhattan’s Tompkins Square Park. (Oct. 25)
Via Associated Press.
Good morning, Whitewater.
Midweek in town will be cloudy, with scattered showers and a high of fifty-four. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset is 5:52, for 10h 27m 37s of daytime. We’ve a waning gibbous moon with 98.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
It’s Dr. Jonas Salk‘s birthday:
Jonas Edward Salk … October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995) was an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed the first successful polio vaccine. Born in New York City, he attended New York University School of Medicine, later choosing to do medical research instead of becoming a practicing physician.
Until 1957, when the Salk vaccine was introduced, polio was considered one of the most frightening public health problems in the world. In the postwar United States, annual epidemics were increasingly devastating. The 1952 U.S. epidemic was the worst outbreak in the nation’s history. Of nearly 58,000 cases reported that year, 3,145 people died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis,[1] with most of its victims being children. The “public reaction was to a plague”, said historian Bill O’Neal.[2] “Citizens of urban areas were to be terrified every summer when this frightful visitor returned.” According to a 2009 PBS documentary, “Apart from the atomic bomb, America’s greatest fear was polio.”[3] As a result, scientists were in a frantic race to find a way to prevent or cure the disease. In 1938, U.S. PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt, the world’s most recognized victim of the disease, had founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (known as March of Dimes Foundation since 2007), an organization that would fund the development of a vaccine.
In 1947, Salk accepted an appointment to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. In 1948, he undertook a project funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to determine the number of different types of polio virus. Salk saw an opportunity to extend this project towards developing a vaccine against polio, and, together with the skilled research team he assembled, devoted himself to this work for the next seven years. The field trial set up to test the Salk vaccine was, according to O’Neill, “the most elaborate program of its kind in history, involving 20,000 physicians and public health officers, 64,000 school personnel, and 220,000 volunteers.” Over 1,800,000 school children took part in the trial.[4] When news of the vaccine’s success was made public on April 12, 1955, Salk was hailed as a “miracle worker” and the day almost became a national holiday. Around the world, an immediate rush to vaccinate began, with countries including Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, West Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Belgium planning to begin polio immunization campaigns using Salk’s vaccine.
Salk campaigned for mandatory vaccination, claiming that public health should be considered a “moral commitment.”[5] His sole focus had been to develop a safe and effective vaccine as rapidly as possible, with no interest in personal profit. When asked who owned the patent to it, Salk said, “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”[6] In 1960, he founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, which is today a center for medical and scientific research. He continued to conduct research and publish books, including Man Unfolding (1972), The Survival of the Wisest (1973), World Population and Human Values: A New Reality (1981), and Anatomy of Reality: Merging of Intuition and Reason (1983). Salk’s last years were spent searching for a vaccine against HIV. His personal papers are stored at the University of California, San Diego Library.[7][8]
On this day in 1892, a fire sweeps through part of Milwaukee:
1892 – Disastrous Fire in Milwaukee’s Third Ward
On this date an exploding oil barrel started a small fire in Milwaukee. It spread rapidly and by morning four people had died, 440 buildings were destroyed, and more than 1,900 people in the Irish neighborhood were left homeless. It was the most disastrous fire in Milwaukee’s history.[Source:Historic Third Ward]
Here’s the Wednesday game from Puzzability:
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This Week’s Game — October 26-30
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No Tricks
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It’s all sweet talk this Halloween week. For each day, we started with a candy brand and replaced all the letters with asterisks, except for every occurrence of the letters in TREAT.
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Example:
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**TTER****ER
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Answer:
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Butterfinger
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What to Submit:
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Submit the candy name (as “Butterfinger” in the example) for your answer.
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Wednesday, October 28
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Katarzyna Depa moved to the industrial region of Silesia, Poland, four years ago to study. She’s young and delicate, and doesn’t fit the typical archetype of a Polish miner—but she spends her days unearthing the mineral so that she can mold it into elegant, handmade jewelry. “Coal has its own nature and doesn’t cooperate with me at all,” she says in this short profile documentary by Michal Sikora. Coal is incredibly soft and fragile, on the hardness scale it falls somewhere between talc and gypsum. And yet, when people ask Depa why she chooses to work with a such a challenging material, she says that “coal is Polish black gold.”
Via The Atlantic.
Downtown Whitewater, Inc. plans a public listening session in early November to discuss that organization’s future. (Some readers have written to me about that organization’s possible plans, following a 10.6.15 Council meeting. I’ve replied individually to those readers, and will offer a few remarks here, along the same lines. The Council discussion from two representatives of Downtown Whitewater is available online @ https://vimeo.com/141695315, from 40:30 to 52:18 on the recording.)
The better practice is simply to wait and see what Downtown Whitewater decides, and thereafter announces, after whatever planning meetings they hold. It’s useful to let that discussion unfold, and see what participants propose.
One knows that Downtown Whitewater has both supporters and critics, but it’s both fair and intellectually sound to wait for the organization to plan and present. Afterward, when there’s something to consider, well, then will be the proper time for review.
I’ve taken a similar approach with the When Green Turns Brown series. This city’s local government planned and presented for months before I began that series. Far from discouraging the city’s proposal, this website was mostly silent on the effort until the city presented its work.
City officials could and would plan as they wished in any event, and a review of those plans could only take place after the city had something to offer. Patience is both intellectually and practically justified in these circumstances.
(I’m not suggesting that Downtown Whitewater’s plans have the same scope or impact for Whitewater as a digester-energy project; they don’t. There are no environmental or health consequences of the former, nor will there be fundamental changes in the town’s economic and business culture as there would certainly be if dealing with waste hauling.)
One’s approach, though, should be the same: to wait and see what the organization proposes for the city.
Paris Day & Night from Teeter-Totter-Tam on Vimeo.
Good morning, Whitewater.
Tuesday will bring rain in the afternoon and evening, with a high of fifty-eight. Sunrise is 7:23 and sunset 5:53, for 10h 30m 15s of daytime. We’ve a full moon today.
Whitewater’s Police & Fire Commission meets at 1 PM, the Urban Forestry Commission at 4:30 PM, and Common Council at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1904, New York begins a new means of transportation for that city:
At 2:35 on the afternoon of October 27, 1904, New York City Mayor George McClellan takes the controls on the inaugural run of the city’s innovative new rapid transit system: the subway.
While London boasts the world’s oldest underground train network (opened in 1863) and Boston built the first subway in the United States in 1897, the New York City subway soon became the largest American system. The first line, operated by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), traveled 9.1 miles through 28 stations. Running from City Hall in lower Manhattan to Grand Central Terminal in midtown, and then heading west along 42nd Street to Times Square, the line finished by zipping north, all the way to 145th Street and Broadway in Harlem. On opening day, Mayor McClellan so enjoyed his stint as engineer that he stayed at the controls all the way from City Hall to 103rd Street.
At 7 p.m. that evening, the subway opened to the general public, and more than 100,000 people paid a nickel each to take their first ride under Manhattan. IRT service expanded to the Bronx in 1905, to Brooklyn in 1908 and to Queens in 1915. Since 1968, the subway has been controlled by the Metropolitan Transport Authority (MTA). The system now has 26 lines and 468 stations in operation; the longest line, the 8th Avenue “A” Express train, stretches more than 32 miles, from the northern tip of Manhattan to the far southeast corner of Queens.
On this day in 1864, a Union officer serves the U.S. Navy very well:
1864 – Waukesha Soldier Sinks Confederate Ship
On this date William Cushing led an expedition to sink the Confederate ram, the Albermarle, which had imposed a blockade near Plymouth, North Carolina and had been sinking Union ships. Cushing’s plan was extremely dangerous and only he and one other soldier escaped drowning or capture. Cushing pulled very close to the Confederate ironclad and exploded a torpedo under it while under heavy fire. Cushing’s crew abandonded ship as it began to sink. The Albemarle also sunk. Cushing received a “letter of thanks” from Congress and was promoted to Lieutenant Commander. He died in 1874 due to ill health and is buried in the Naval Cemetery at Annapolis, Maryland. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes, p.274-285]
Here’s Puzzability‘s Tuesday game:
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This Week’s Game — October 26-30
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No Tricks
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It’s all sweet talk this Halloween week. For each day, we started with a candy brand and replaced all the letters with asterisks, except for every occurrence of the letters in TREAT.
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Example:
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**TTER****ER
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Answer:
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Butterfinger
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What to Submit:
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Submit the candy name (as “Butterfinger” in the example) for your answer.
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Tuesday, October 27
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Houdini stars Adrien Brody, Kristen Connolly, and Evan Jones in a story about “the man behind the magic as he finds fame, engages in espionage, battles spiritualists and encounters the greatest names of the era, from U.S. presidents to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Grigori Rasputin.”
The 2014 mini-series received a Primetime Emmy Award, and eighteen other award nominations.
Embedded above is the trailer for the film. The full, 2 hour 30 minute series will be shown in one sitting.
Enjoy.
Lauren Goode of the Verge writes about an encounter in Costa Rica with a crustacean called the Halloween Crab:
Only later, once I was able to connect to WiFi, did I learn that we had just had our first encounter with Gecarcinus quadratus de Saussure, otherwise known as the Halloween crab. And only later, in the light of day, did I see how awesome they are.
Halloween crabs are nicknamed so because of their brilliant colors — they have a tar-black carapace, blood-orange legs and purple claws, with a pair of yellow spots behind the eyes. They are land crabs in little technicolor dreamcoats. They measure around two inches across the carapace and four inches from claw to claw, but they have an adorable way of making themselves bigger when you near them, putting up their claws as if to say “It wasn’t me!” while they scuttle away.
Post 42 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green.
The Donohue firm describes its memoranda about a wastewater upgrade as technical memoranda. Waste importation is described in Technical Memorandum 4. There are, for Donohue and the municipal administration advancing that firm’s work, two benefits of the description: the use of the word technical gives their memoranda a patina of something scientific, detailed, and precise, while simultaneously allowing the firm to claim that their work is only one portion of a broader consideration (that is, only about the engineering aspects of the project).
Consider, though, how lightly & hesitantly the Donohue firm, in its technical memorandum, describes supposedly profiting from importing other cities’ unwanted waste into Whitewater:
However, smaller scale projects in which the capital costs can be matched with the expected energy savings may yet be feasible. These projects could be staged such that large capital expenses are not made without a high level of confidence in their potential for energy production. The first stage would be to install hauled waste receiving station proposed previously to generate additional biogas along the previously proposed dual fuel boilers to make us of the gas. This would have a combined construction cost of approximately $473,000. This project would save approximately $50,000 a year in natural gas and should reach $30,000 a year in tipping fees. With an estimated total revenue of $80,000 the project has simple payback period of approximately 6 years.
Depending on additional gas production from the hauled in waste the second phase could add electricity production the form of engine generators to utilize any gas not being consumed by the dual fuel boilers.
Additional engine generators could be added in a later stage should the receiving program continue to be successful.
We have ‘may yet be feasible,’ ‘could be staged,’ ‘depending on additional gas production,’ ‘should the receiving program continue to be successful.’
That’s it for a published analysis of supposed gas production from this engineering firm. Projections of how much money might be made, but no detailed analysis how that money will be made: estimates, without foundations.
(Again, tellingly, Donohue is clear that these projections of waste importation are merely ‘staged’ ones toward a ‘second phase,’ and thereafter a ‘later stage.’)
Either Donohue’s careful, vague description of a fundamental change for Whitewater (significant, constant importation of other cities’ unwanted filth) is a calculated attempt to downplay an importation program, or Messrs. Clapper and Reel truly think that municipal resources are legitimately used for Wastewater Superintendent Reel’s on-public-time science experiments, without any idea where this leads.
Next week: Looking at shifting descriptions of the project, including the latest, completely absurd one.
WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN: Mondays @ 10 AM, here on FREE WHITEWATER.
Good morning, Whitewater.
A new work week begins in town with mostly sunny skies and a high of sixty-two. Sunrise is 7:22 and sunset 5:55, for 10h 32m 55s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1881, a now-legendary confrontation takes place:
…the Earp brothers face off against the Clanton-McLaury gang in a legendary shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.
….On the morning of October 25, Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury came into Tombstone for supplies. Over the next 24 hours, the two men had several violent run-ins with the Earps and their friend Doc Holliday. Around 1:30 p.m. on October 26, Ike’s brother Billy rode into town to join them, along with Frank McLaury and Billy Claiborne. The first person they met in the local saloon was Holliday, who was delighted to inform them that their brothers had both been pistol-whipped by the Earps. Frank and Billy immediately left the saloon, vowing revenge.
Around 3 p.m., the Earps and Holliday spotted the five members of the Clanton-McLaury gang in a vacant lot behind the OK Corral, at the end of Fremont Street. The famous gunfight that ensued lasted all of 30 seconds, and around 30 shots were fired. Though it’s still debated who fired the first shot, most reports say that the shootout began when Virgil Earp pulled out his revolver and shot Billy Clanton point-blank in the chest, while Doc Holliday fired a shotgun blast at Tom McLaury’s chest. Though Wyatt Earp wounded Frank McLaury with a shot in the stomach, Frank managed to get off a few shots before collapsing, as did Billy Clanton. When the dust cleared, Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers were dead, and Virgil and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday were wounded. Ike Clanton and Claiborne had run for the hills.
Sheriff John Behan of Cochise County, who witnessed the shootout, charged the Earps and Holliday with murder. A month later, however, a Tombstone judge found the men not guilty, ruling that they were “fully justified in committing these homicides.” The famous shootout has been immortalized in many movies, including Frontier Marshal (1939), Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), Tombstone (1993) and Wyatt Earp (1994).
On this day in 1818, Wisconsin gets her first counties:
On this date Lewis Cass, governor of the Michigan Territory, declared the first counties in Wisconsin. The counties included Michilimackinac (all areas drained by Lake Superior tributaries), Brown, and Crawford counties, which were separated through Portage. Michilimackinac County is now part of the state of Michigan. Governor Cass later became the Secretary of War under President Andrew Jackson, as well as the Minister to France and a Michigan Senator. Cass, a Democrat, also ran for president in 1848, but lost to Whig Zachary Taylor due to factions within the Democratic Party and the formation of the Free Soil Party. [Source: Historic Elmwood Cemetery and Foundation]
Puzzability begins a new series this week entitled, No Tricks:
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This Week’s Game — October 26-30
|
|||||
|
No Tricks
|
|||||
|
It’s all sweet talk this Halloween week. For each day, we started with a candy brand and replaced all the letters with asterisks, except for every occurrence of the letters in TREAT.
|
|||||
|
Example:
|
|||||
|
**TTER****ER
|
|||||
|
Answer:
|
|||||
|
Butterfinger
|
|||||
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What to Submit:
|
|||||
|
Submit the candy name (as “Butterfinger” in the example) for your answer.
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|||||
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|||||
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Monday, October 26
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Along the lines of listing key topics (see the right sidebar at FREE WHITEWATER for a list of particular areas of concern), it’s worth being clear that important issues in one part of the city should not be ignored in other parts.
An Open Note to Leaders of Government, the School District, and UW-Whitewater: misconduct of officials in one public institution does not entitle those implicated to speak without criticism on unrelated matters elsewhere.
When officials who have tolerated or excused misconduct within their own institutions look to change the subject at another forum, those who allow them to change that subject are complicit in creating a distraction from serious wrongs. No reasonable person owes anyone that distraction; those who aid struggling leaders in subject-changing in this way are, themselves, culpable of a secondary wrong. This should be obvious, but somehow institutional leaders in Whitewater are too dense to grasp the point, or too callous to care.
No matter: those officials who invite someone for a lesser discussion can expect direct questions about why they ignored discussion of serious wrongs of the invited guest’s institution. Those officials have every right, however disordered, to offer public-relations cover to others. They do not, however, have the right do so with impunity.
Whitewater’s various leaders have had years of carrying on this way, aiding each others’ attempts to distract from institutional wrongs. These years have been years too many; there shouldn’t, and so won’t, be more.
BATZ, the Full Movie from Kawa Paris on Vimeo.
