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Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 9.19.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday will be partly cloudy with a high of sixty-eight. Sunrise is 6:39 and sunset 6:57, for 12h 17m 34s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 32.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Someone wants more cat food:

On this day in 1959, Soviet Premier Khrushchev learns where he can’t go:

…Nikita Khrushchev, having arrived in Los Angeles during a two-week coast-to-coast tour by the Soviet leader, learned that he would not be allowed to visit Disneyland, ostensibly for security reasons.
Khrushchev’s immersion in Hollywood began that day with a tour of the 20th Century Fox Studios. He was ushered onto the sound stage of “Can-Can,” where he met Shirley MacLaine and Juliet Prowse. Khrushchev begged off when MacLaine sought to engage him in an impromptu dance and watched as cast members performed a number from the film, then in production. Afterward, Frank Sinatra hosted a lunch for a delighted Khrushchev and his wife.

The mood darkened, however, after Spyros Skouras, 20th Century Fox’s president, introduced Khrushchev at Los Angeles Town Hall. Skouras, citing Khrushchev’s boasts that the Soviet Union would “bury” capitalism, said while L.A. wasn’t interested in “burying” anyone, it would meet any challenge.
Responding angrily, Khrushchev said: “If you want to go on with the arms race, very well. We accept that challenge. As for the output of rockets — well, they are on the assembly line. This is a most serious question. It is one of life or death, ladies and gentlemen — one of war and peace.”
When on top of that perceived insult, the premier learned he could not tour Disneyland, he fumed: “And I say, ‘I would very much like to go and see Disneyland.’ But then, we cannot guarantee your security, they say. Then what must I do? Commit suicide? What is it? Is there an epidemic of cholera there or something? Or have gangsters taken hold of the place that can destroy me?”
The next morning, Khrushchev continued his trip through California without further incident, eventually returning to Washington for an unproductive summit meeting with President Dwight Eisenhower.

On this day in 1832, the Sauk and Fox concede:

On this date Sauk and Fox Indians signed the treaty ending the Black Hawk War. The treaty demanded that the Sauk cede some six million acres of land that ran the length of the eastern boundary of modern-day Iowa. The Sauk and Fox were given until June 1, 1833 to leave the area and never return to the surrendered lands. Some sources place the date as September 21.[Source: Along the Black Hawk Trail by William F. Stark, p. 160-161]

Poll, Weird Tales

Friday Poll: Who Invented Chess?

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Here’s a surprising headline:

World Chess President Claims He Was Abducted By Space Aliens — And They Invented Chess

“They came in a flying saucer, picked me up, and I spent a whole day in outer space.”

The story‘s over at the Huffington Post, where current International Chess Foundation president – and former president of the Russian republic of Kalmykia – Kirsan Ilyumzhinov describes his supposed encounters:

It was not in our Russian space vehicles, but with aliens. They came in a flying saucer, picked me up, and I spent a whole day in outer space.

It was from my apartment. They flew in and picked me up. They were wearing yellow spacesuits. I remember this moment exactly. We went off to their interplanetary ship, and I started to feel a lack of air, a lack of oxygen. They gave me a spacesuit as well.

One of the aliens pointed to his chest and indicated that the oxygen supply could be regulated by turning a dial. So this is what I did.

Ilyumzhinov also contends that chess was likely an extraterrestrial invention:

“My theory is that chess comes from space. Because it’s the same rules — 64 squares, black and white, and the same rules in Japan, in China, in Qatar, in Mongolia, in Africa — the rules are the same. Why? I think maybe it is from space.”

Below, Ilyumzhinov describes his supposed encounter with beings not-of-this-world:

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 9.18.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Friday will bring a high of seventy-six to Whitewater, and an even chance of afternoon thunderstorms. Sunrise is 6:38 and sunset 6:58, for 12h 20m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 22.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1793, a great building begins:

George Washington lays the cornerstone to the United States Capitol building, the home of the legislative branch of American government. The building would take nearly a century to complete, as architects came and went, the British set fire to it and it was called into use during the Civil War. Today, the Capitol building, with its famous cast-iron dome and important collection of American art, is part of the Capitol Complex, which includes six Congressional office buildings and three Library of Congress buildings, all developed in the 19th and 20th centuries.

As a young nation, the United States had no permanent capital, and Congress met in eight different cities, including Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia, before 1791. In 1790, Congress passed the Residence Act, which gave President Washington the power to select a permanent home for the federal government. The following year, he chose what would become the District of Columbia from land provided by Maryland. Washington picked three commissioners to oversee the capital city’s development and they in turn chose French engineer Pierre Charles L’Enfant to come up with the design. However, L’Enfant clashed with the commissioners and was fired in 1792. A design competition was then held, with a Scotsman named William Thornton submitting the winning entry for the Capitol building. In September 1793, Washington laid the Capitol’s cornerstone and the lengthy construction process, which would involve a line of project managers and architects, got under way.

In 1800, Congress moved into the Capitol’s north wing. In 1807, the House of Representatives moved into the building’s south wing, which was finished in 1811. During the War of 1812, the British invaded Washington, D.C., and set fire to the Capitol on August 24, 1814. A rainstorm saved the building from total destruction. Congress met in nearby temporary quarters from 1815 to 1819. In the early 1850s, work began to expand the Capitol to accommodate the growing number of Congressmen. In 1861, construction was temporarily halted while the Capitol was used by Union troops as a hospital and barracks. Following the war, expansions and modern upgrades to the building continued into the next century.

On this day in 1942, a flood overcomes Spring Valley:

1942 – Spring Valley Flood
On the evening of September 17, 1942, after a day of heavy rain, water began rolling through the streets of Spring Valley, in Pierce Co. The village, strung out along the Eau Galle River in a deep valley, had been inundated before, but this was no ordinary flood. By 11:30p.m., water in the streets was 12 to 20 feet deep, flowing at 12 to 15 miles an hour, and laden with logs, lumber, and dislodged buildings. Throughout the early morning hours of Sept. 18th, village residents became trapped in their homes or were carried downstream as buildings were swept off foundations and floated away. One couple spent the night chest-deep in water in their living room, holding their family dog above the water and fending off floating furniture. The raging torrent uprooted and twisted the tracks of the Northwestern Railroad like wire, and electricity and drinking water were unavailable for several days. Miraculously, there were no deaths or serious injuries.

Here’s the final game in Puzzability‘s Mouth Pieces series:

This Week’s Game — September 14-18
Mouth Pieces
We’re listening for art sounds this week. For each day, we started with the name of a famous painting. Then, for the day’s clue, we broke it down into a series of words that, when said in order, sounds like the original title. You’ll probably need to say the words out loud to get the answers.
Example:
Him, purr, Hessians, Hun, rice
Answer:
“Impression, Sunrise” (by Claude Monet)
What to Submit:
Submit the painting’s title (as “Impression, Sunrise” in the example) for your answer.
Friday, September 18
Suppers, hiss, dents, huff, Ma’am, hurry

Gov. Walker, Politics, Presidential race 2016, Press

Last Night’s GOP Debate

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I’m not a major-party voter, but like millions I have watched the GOP presidential debates (and will watch the Democrats’ debates, too).  There’s a lot to learn from watching the candidates, for all the showiness, the pre-debate theatrics, etc.

The key point about all these encounters is that they are intra-party affairs – it’s a debate among those of the same general view.  If one GOP candidate does poorly, there’s another GOP candidate likely to gain. Success or failure of some in this setting is not a repudiation of a party teachings; it’s simply a reallocation of support among relatively like-minded candidates.

That brings us to Gov. Walker: conservatism is everywhere in the national GOP, but his candidacy as a conservative has been a disappointment.

Over at NBC News, Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Carrie Dann have a story entitled, Winners and Losers from Last Night’s Debate. I think their assessments are spot-on.

Here’s their assessment of Gov. Walker:

Scott Walker: He had a good first 10 minutes with his “apprentice” line. But he faded after that. It was like the football team that immediately delivered on the trick play it had been practicing, but then showed little else for the rest of the game.

It seems that Scott Walker knows it was not a good night, from post-debate remarks quoted in the Journal Sentinel:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker needed a breakout performance in Wednesday’s GOP presidential debate, but he had a problem:

In the three-hour forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, he was asked just three questions.

“Short of tackling someone, I don’t know what more I could have done,” Walker told reporters after the debate. “I aggressively interrupted (CNN moderator) Jake Tapper a bunch of times along the way and short of an absolute brawl, I don’t know what more one could do.”

One makes one’s own opportunities.  That means, in this case, speaking more, and speaking in sharp exchanges with rivals within the same party.

That didn’t happen at the first debate; it didn’t happen in the second.

Candidates are responsible for their own campaigns, of course, but it’s worth repeating that Wisconsin’s press has not prepared her candidates for the kind of exchanges that other major-party candidates handle often and easily.

 

 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 9.17.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in town will be partly cloudy during the day, with a daytime high of eighty-four, and a probability of thunderstorms later tonight. Sunrise is 6:37 and sunset 7:00, for 12h 23m 20s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1501% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Fire & Rescue Task Force meets at 7 AM.

It’s Constitution Day in America.  On this day in 1787, thirty-nine delegates sign the draft Constitution:

After nearly four months of debate, on September 8, 1787, the final text of the Constitution was set down and revised. Then, an official copy of the document was engrossed by Jacob Shallus. The effort consisted of copying the text (prelude, articles and endorsement) on four sheets of vellum parchment, made from treated animal skin and measuring approximately 28 inches (71 cm) by 23 inches (58 cm), probably with a goose quill. Shallus engrossed the entire document except for the list of states at the end of the document, which are in Alexander Hamilton‘s handwriting.[103] On September 17, 1787, following a speech given by Benjamin Franklin, 39 delegates endorsed and submitted the Constitution to the Congress of the Confederation.[104]

On this day in 1862, Wisconsin regiments fight at Antietam:

September 17, 1862, was the bloodiest day in U.S. military history. More than 125,000 troops faced off and over 24,000 were killed, wounded or missing as Union forces stopped the first Confederate invasion of the North. The 2nd, 6th and 7th Wisconsin Infantry regiments were in the thickest of the fighting. The 6th Infantry led a charge that killed or wounded 150 of its 280 men. Of the 800 officers and men in the Iron Brigade who marched out that morning, 343 were wounded or killed.

Here’s Puzzability‘s Thursday game in its week-long Mouth Pieces series:

This Week’s Game — September 14-18
Mouth Pieces
We’re listening for art sounds this week. For each day, we started with the name of a famous painting. Then, for the day’s clue, we broke it down into a series of words that, when said in order, sounds like the original title. You’ll probably need to say the words out loud to get the answers.
Example:
Him, purr, Hessians, Hun, rice
Answer:
“Impression, Sunrise” (by Claude Monet)
What to Submit:
Submit the painting’s title (as “Impression, Sunrise” in the example) for your answer.
Thursday, September 17
Newt, diss, hand, Incas, dare, gaze

City, Culture, Education, Local Government, Politics

The Desiccator

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Exsiccator_hg

Over at National Review, conservative Peter Spiliakos writes in reply to conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin on Scott Walker’s campaign. (Rubin thinks Walker has gone too far to the right, but Spiliakos thinks that Walker – and many Republicans leaders – have lost touch with huge parts of their own electorate.)

For Rubin the matter is one of ideology; for Spiliakos it’s one of unfamiliarity with one’s own party.

Spiliakos’s observations, however, are applicable apart from the Walker campaign, and apart from GOP politics. They’re more broadly interesting than as an intra-party discussion. (I’m a libertarian, and find his remarks useful beyond major-party politics to which I have, and owe, no allegiance.)

Spiliakos contends that

If it was just a Scott Walker problem, it wouldn’t matter. Walker is just one politician. The big problem is the social gulf between establishment Republican politicians and large sections of the right-leaning electorate is so big that the politicians can’t even imagine what many of their voters are thinking.

A competent and honest political class would try to find the common ground, and reach a compromise between the party’s factions, but the current Republican leadership seems to take little interest in the opinions of anyone outside the employer interests and consultant/lobbyist/campaign aide/congressional staffer apparatchiks.

Here’s Spiliakos on why this happens:

I think the problem is more social. With the decline of civic institutions among people in the lower half of the income distribution, the social power of groups that are well organized tends to increase. The influence of the donor class doesn’t just come from the checks. It comes from the social interactions at local Chamber of Commerce events where an aspiring politician gives a speech and then listens to local business owners talk about how they have trouble finding willing workers at a good price (to the employer.) The unorganized majority of Americans who disagree with this view don’t get to invite Walker to meetings, because they don’t have meetings.

I’ve no doubt – none at all – that there is a wide gap between self-described elites and ordinary people. Locally, however, I don’t think the biggest problems are ones of personal unfamiliarity. (After all, it’s not as though I am describing myself as a tribune of the people. There are already too many people in town who claim to speak on behalf of all the town; this is a site of individual, independent commentary.)

Our local problem isn’t that elites don’t speak to ordinary people – it’s that local elites, by an over-reliance on an echo chamber of their own kind – lack the clear reasoning of both ordinary people locally and competitive Americans elsewhere. They’re not unfamiliar with ordinary people; they’re too familiar (and too satisfied with) their own thinking.

They see ordinary people each day, but these local elites falsely assume that they have better ideas, and better powers of reasoning, than ordinary people.

Prospective town squires may arrive on our scene educated and reasonable, but needlessly living too much within a small fraction of all society, and scampering to its neurotic demands, leaves reasonable people addled, leaves educated people forgetful and ignorant.

Even the finest, most capable people will wither and atrophy in that desiccator.

Most people are sharp and capable; even the sharpest and most capable degrade their abilities when confined to a small, closed chamber.

After a while, the commonplace reasoning of people from across this continent starts to look to a cosseted few like magic, or an alien teaching unfairly imposed.

On that contrary, that commonplace reasoning – shared equally by all races & ethnic groups – is the language of vast millions from ocean to ocean, who yet remain energetic, creative, capable residents of the most advanced civilization in human history.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 9.16.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Midweek in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-four.  Sunrise is 6:36 and sunset 7:02, for 12h 26m 13s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1908, General Motors is founded:

194px-General_Motors.svgThe company was founded on September 16, 1908, in Flint, Michigan, as a holding company for McLaughlin Car Company of Canada Limited and Buick, then controlled by William C. Durant.[11] At the beginning of the 20th century there were fewer than 8,000 automobiles in America and Durant had become a leading manufacturer of horse-drawn vehicles in Flint before making his foray into the automotive industry.[12] GM’s co-founder was Charles Stewart Mott, whose carriage company was merged into Buick prior to GM’s creation. Over the years Mott became the largest single stockholder in GM and spent his life with his Mott Foundation which has benefited the city of Flint, his adopted home. GM acquired Oldsmobile later that year. In 1909, Durant brought in Cadillac, Elmore, Oakland and several others. Also in 1909, GM acquired the Reliance Motor Truck Company of Owosso, Michigan, and the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company of Pontiac, Michigan, the predecessors of GMC Truck. Durant lost control of GM in 1910 along with R. S. McLaughlin to a bankers’ trust, because of the large amount of debt taken on in its acquisitions coupled with a collapse in new vehicle sales.[13]

The next year, Durant started the Chevrolet Motor Car Company in 1911 in the U.S. in Canada in 1915 and through this he secretly purchased a controlling interest in GM. Durant took back control of the company after one of the most dramatic proxy wars in American business history. Durant then reorganized General Motors Company into General Motors Corporation in 1916 Merging General Motors of Canada Limited as an ally in 1918. Shortly after, he again lost control, this time for good, after the new vehicle market collapsed. Alfred P. Sloan was picked to take charge of the corporation and led it to its post-war global dominance when the seven manufacturing facilities operated by Chevrolet before GM acquired the company began to contribute to GM operations. These facilities were added to the individual factories that were exclusive to Cadillac, Buick, Oldsmobile, Oakland, and other companies acquired by GM. This unprecedented growth of GM would last into the early 1980s when it employed 349,000 workers and operated 150 assembly plants.
Here’s the Wednesday game from Puzzability in its Mouth Pieces series:
This Week’s Game — September 14-18
Mouth Pieces
We’re listening for art sounds this week. For each day, we started with the name of a famous painting. Then, for the day’s clue, we broke it down into a series of words that, when said in order, sounds like the original title. You’ll probably need to say the words out loud to get the answers.
Example:
Him, purr, Hessians, Hun, rice
Answer:
“Impression, Sunrise” (by Claude Monet)
What to Submit:
Submit the painting’s title (as “Impression, Sunrise” in the example) for your answer.
Wednesday, September 16
Docile, he, pink, chip, sea

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 9.15.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday in town will be sunny with a high of eighty-three. Sunrise is 6:35 and sunset 7:04, for 12h 29m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 6.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

How strong are crocodiles? They’re really strong —

On this day in 1832, the U.S. signs a treaty with the Ho-Chunk nation:

1832 – Ho-Chunk Treaty Signed
On this date a a treaty was signed between the Ho-Chunk and the United States that stipulated that the Ho-Chunk cede lands lying to the south and east of the Wisconsin river as well as lands around the Fox river of Green Bay. [Source:Oklahoma State University Library]

Here’s the Tuesday game from Puzzability:

This Week’s Game — September 14-18
Mouth Pieces
We’re listening for art sounds this week. For each day, we started with the name of a famous painting. Then, for the day’s clue, we broke it down into a series of words that, when said in order, sounds like the original title. You’ll probably need to say the words out loud to get the answers.
Example:
Him, purr, Hessians, Hun, rice
Answer:
“Impression, Sunrise” (by Claude Monet)
What to Submit:
Submit the painting’s title (as “Impression, Sunrise” in the example) for your answer.
Tuesday, September 15
Curl, widow, purr, leer, ink

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