Anderson, Cartoons & Comics
Less Concerned
by JOHN ADAMS •
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 7.8.15
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning, Whitewater.
Wednesday in town will be mostly cloudy and mild, with a high of seventy-two. Sunrise is 5:25 and sunset 8:35, for 15h 10m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 54.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1853, Commodore Perry pays a visit to Japan, in an audacious (if successful) attempt to persuade Japan to establish diplomatic relations with the United States:
Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, representing the U.S. government, sails into Tokyo Bay, Japan, with a squadron of four vessels. For a time, Japanese officials refused to speak with Perry, but under threat of attack by the superior American ships they accepted letters from President Millard Fillmore, making the United States the first Western nation to establish relations with Japan since it had been declared closed to foreigners two centuries before. Only the Dutch and the Chinese were allowed to continue trade with Japan after 1639, but this trade was restricted and confined to the island of Dejima at Nagasaki.
After giving Japan time to consider the establishment of external relations, Commodore Perry returned to Tokyo with nine ships in March 1854. On March 31, he signed the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade and permitting the establishment of a U.S. consulate in Japan. In April 1860, the first Japanese diplomats to visit a foreign power in over 200 years reached Washington, D.C., and remained in the U.S. capital for several weeks, discussing expansion of trade with the United States. Treaties with other Western powers followed soon after, contributing to the collapse of the shogunate and ultimately the modernization of Japan.
On this day in 1850, an estranged Mormon with a Walworth County residence declares himself a king:
1850 – James Jesse Strang Crowned King
On this date James Jesse Strang, leader of the estranged Mormon faction, the Strangites, was crowned king; the only man to achieve such a title in America. When founder Joseph Smith was assassinated, Strang forged a letter from Smith dictating he was to be the heir. The Mormon movement split into followers of Strang and followers of Brigham Young. As he gained more followers (but never nearly as many as Brigham Young), Strang became comparable to a Saint, and in 1850 was crowned King James in a ceremony in which he wore a discarded red robe of a Shakespearean actor, and a metal crown studded with a cluster of stars as his followers sang him hosannas. Soon after his crowning, he announced that Mormonism embraced and supported polygamy. (Young’s faction was known to have practiced polygamy, but had not at this time announced it publicly.) A number of followers lived in Walworth County, including Strang at a home in Burlington. In 1856 Strang was himself assassinated, leaving five wives. Without Strang’s leadership, his movement disintegrated. [Source: Wisconsin Saints and Sinners, by Fred L. Holmes, p. 106-121]
A Google a Day asks a science question:
What Swedish taxonomist created binomial nomenclature?
Science/Nature, Space
Drawing Closer to Pluto
by JOHN ADAMS •
As the New Horizons spacecraft approaches Pluto, more about that world is evident, including its actual color —
Crime
The BB Gun Shootings in Whitewater
by JOHN ADAMS •
There’s an account from WISC of injuries an adult BB gun shooter inflicted on others in Whitewater on July 4th. I’ve embedded it below. It’s a thorough recounting, and the report offers some of those who suffered personal injury or property damage the opportunity to speak directly.
Personal injury, in particular, can be a hard thing, but there’s nothing hard about forming an opinion on a crime like this: there’s no justification worthy of the term for any part of the alleged accused’s conduct. It’s wholly wrong.
That residents and emergency workers responded quickly is all to the good, and deserves commendation.
Film
Film: The Trailer for Steve Jobs
by JOHN ADAMS •
Steve Jobs is scheduled for release on 10.9.15 —
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 7.7.15
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning, Whitewater.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be party cloudy, with a high of seventy. Sunrise is 5:24 and sunset 8:25, for 15h 11m 08s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 65.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.
The lights dim. Cameras start to roll. A film crew silently watches. Suddenly! From behind a hand-built skyline, a towering beast appears! Shaking off a layer of dust, the massive foam-and-rubber monster leans back to act out an amazing roar (the sound effect will be added in later). Then, stomping towards the camera, the giant moves closer, and closer, until…”Cut!”
Seen this film before? This live action genre, known as “Tokusatsu” (??) in Japanese, is unmistakable in its style, and still evident in many modern beast-based thrillers. In today’s Doodle, we spotlight one of Tokusatsu’s kings, Eiji Tsuburaya, the quiet pioneer who created Ultraman, co-created Godzilla, and brought Tokusatsu to the global cinematic mainstream….
On this day in 1832, Gen. Atkinson’s militia, including Abraham Lincoln, encamp at Palmyra during the Black Hawk War:
1832 – Black Hawk War Encampment in Palmyra
On this date during the Black Hawk War, General Atkinson led his entire militia, which included future President’s Abraham Lincoln and Zachary Taylor, to a camp just south of Palmyra. [Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers, edited by Sarah Davis McBride]
A Google a Day asks a question about philosophy:
Which virtue do Socrates and Thrasymachus try to define in Book I of The Republic?
City, Film
Film Foreign Film Series: Leviathan, Wednesday, July 8th @ 12:30 PM
by JOHN ADAMS •
The Seniors in the Park Foreign Foreign Film Series will have a showing of Leviathan this Wednesday, July 8th @ 12:30 PM.
Leviathan is the 2015 Golden Globe winner for Best Foreign Language film, and tells of the conflict between Kolya and his town’s corrupt mayor.
The film will be shown in the Starin Park Community Building in Whitewater.
Embedded below is the trailer for the film.
WGTB, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN
The Once and Present Vendor
by JOHN ADAMS •
Post 18 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.
One might, as in the picture above, see only the rich colors of a forest; looking more closely, though, one sees that vegetation shares the canvas with something else.
From the beginning, in a closed meeting, Whitewater’s city officials met with three design and engineering firms, and one large-scale waste hauler, about waste importation into the city.
Before the first public presentation, long before ‘feasibility studies’ and ‘technical memoranda,’ Whitewater’s city manager and wastewater superintendent held discussions with a waste hauler to import other cities’ unwanted filth into Whitewater.
At those discussions were the Trane, Black & Veatch, and Donohue firms. In these last weeks, I’ve written about Trane’s proposals to Whitewater, for a digester-energy project and for an energy-savings contract. Trane’s role is a story about Trane, but also about the judgment of those who relied on Trane.
Along the way toward this digester project, Trane slipped from view, so to speak, and the Donohue engineering firm became the outside-vendor face of the project. They were present at earlier closed-door meetings, and emerged later as the advocates of both a wastewater plant upgrade and a digester-energy project.
About Donohue’s work toward a digester-energy project, it’s worth offering two principal questions:
(1) what have they considered, and (2) what have they left unconsidered?
In the language of economics, this would be something like what is seen and what is not seen.
What they have considered and what they haven’t is both a matter of their own work and the limitations city officials have placed on it, by defining the scope of the project.
There is no omniscience in Donohue’s analysis or assessments; theirs is human work, and it is susceptible of limitation as all human work is.
In these weeks ahead, I’ll consider Donohue’s published work, written or recorded, in support of a digester-energy project. I’ll do my best to find both what is seen, and that which has been otherwise left unseen.
WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN: Mondays @ 10 AM, here on FREE WHITEWATER.
Music
Monday Music: Kim Wilson, Gumbo Blues
by JOHN ADAMS •
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 7.6.15
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning, Whitewater.
Monday in our city will be warm, with afternoon thunderstorms and a high of eighty-seven. Sunrise is 5:23 and sunset 8:35, for 15h 12m 11s of daytime.
To keep up with cost-conscious shippers, BubbleWrap is modifying its product. It just won’t sound the same:
Richard III (2 October 1452 – 22 August 1485) was King of England from 1483 until his death in 1485, at the age of 32, in the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat at Bosworth Field, the last decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses, marked the end of the Middle Ages in England. He is the subject of the fictional historical play Richard III by William Shakespeare.
When his brother King Edward IV died in April 1483, Richard was named Lord Protector of the realm for Edward’s son and successor, the 12-year-old Edward V. As the young king travelled to London from Ludlow, Richard met and escorted him to lodgings in the Tower of London, where Edward V’s own brother Richard of Shrewsbury joined him shortly afterwards. Arrangements were made for Edward’s coronation on 22 June 1483; but, before the young king could be crowned, his father’s marriage to his mother Elizabeth Woodville was declared invalid, making their children illegitimate and ineligible for the throne. On 25 June, an assembly of Lords and commoners endorsed the claims. The following day, Richard III began his reign, and he was crowned on 6 July 1483. The young princes were not seen in public after August, and accusations circulated that the boys had been murdered on Richard’s orders, giving rise to the legend of the Princes in the Tower.
Of the two major rebellions against Richard, the first, in October 1483, was led by staunch allies of Edward IV[1] and Richard’s former ally, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham;[2] but the revolt collapsed. In August 1485, Henry Tudor and his uncle, Jasper Tudor, led a second rebellion against Richard. Henry Tudor landed in southern Wales with a small contingent of French troops and marched through his birthplace, Pembrokeshire, recruiting soldiers. Henry’s force engaged Richard’s army and defeated it at the Battle of Bosworth Field in Leicestershire. Richard was struck down in the conflict, making him the last English king to die in battle on home soil and the first since Harold II was killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
After the battle Richard’s corpse was taken to Leicester and buried without pomp.[3] His original tomb is believed to have been destroyed during the Reformation, and his remains were lost for more than five centuries.[4] In 2012, an archaeological excavation was conducted on a city council car park on the site once occupied by Greyfriars Priory Church. The University of Leicester identified the skeleton found in the excavation as that of Richard III as a result of radiocarbon dating, comparison with contemporary reports of his appearance, and comparison of his mitochondrial DNA with that of two matrilineal descendants of Richard III’s eldest sister, Anne of York.[5][6][7] Richard’s remains were reburied in Leicester Cathedral on 26 March 2015.[8]
A Google a Day asks a history question:
Who is generally regarded as one of the very first Americans to die in the struggle for liberty from British Rule?
Animation
Sunday Animation: Starry Night
by JOHN ADAMS •
A try to visualize the flow of the famous painting "Starry Night" of Vincent Van Gogh.
The user can interact with the animation. Also, the sound responds to the flow.
Made with openframeworks.
Available on the app-store: itunes.apple.com/us/app/starry-night-interactive-animation/id511943282
Available on google-play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.artof01.starrynight
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 7.5.15
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning, Whitewater.
Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-five. Sunrise is 5:22 and sunset 8:36, for 15h 13m 11s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 85% of its visible disk illuminated.
Our Independence Holiday events conclude today along Cravath, opening at Noon and closing at 5 PM.
It’s today that the FIFA Women’s World Cup match between America and Japan takes place, at 6 PM central time. (Yesterday saw an exciting, extra-time game for third place between England and Germany, and an English win over Germany, 1-0.)
The Solar Impulse 2 plane completed a trans-Pacific flight from Japan to Hawaii on July 3rd. It’s another step in use of genuinely green and clean technology:
On this day in 1832, Gen. Atkinson enters the trembling lands:
On this date, General Atkinson and his troops entered the area known by the Native Americans as “trembling lands” in their pursuit of Black Hawk. The area was some 10 square miles and contained a large bog. Although the land appeared safe, it would undulate or tremble for yards when pressure was applied. Many of the militiamen were on horses, which plunged to their bellies in the swamp. The “trembling lands” forced Atkinson to retrace his steps back toward the Rock River, in the process losing days in his pursuit of Black Hawk. [Source: Along the Black Hawk Trail by William G. Stark]
Holiday
Varieties of Fireworks
by JOHN ADAMS •
All beautiful, like flowers, however named —
Via The 12 Kinds Of Fireworks You’ll Probably Encounter This July 4th @ Digg
America, Holiday
Happy Independence Day
by JOHN ADAMS •
An annual reading of the Declaration of Independence, with transcript below, from NPR —
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And now we will celebrate Independence Day, as we do every year at MORNING EDITION, with our reading of the Declaration of Independence.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
(Reading) When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
(Reading) We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
GREENE: (Reading) That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.
LAKSHMI SINGH, BYLINE: (Reading) And to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.
JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE: (Reading) Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established shall not be changed for light and transient causes. And accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: (Reading) But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.
DEBORAH AMOS, BYLINE: (Reading) Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies. And such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.
JOE PALCA, BYLINE: (Reading) The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
AUDIE CORNISH, BYLINE: (Reading) He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operations till his assent should be obtained. And when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: (Reading) He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, BYLINE: (Reading) He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable and distant from the depository of their public records for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI, BYLINE: (Reading) He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: (Reading) He’s refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise, the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within.
CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: (Reading) He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states. For that purpose, obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: (Reading) He has obstructed the administration of justice by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices and the amounted payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
MICHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: (Reading) He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies without the consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.
ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: (Reading) He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation.
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: (Reading) For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us, for protecting them by a mock trial from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states.
ROBERT SMITH, BYLINE: (Reading) For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world, for imposing taxes on us without our consent, for depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: (Reading) For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses, for abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government and enlarging its boundaries so as to render at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies.
LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:
(Reading) For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments, for suspending our own legislatures and declaring themselves invested with the power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
SONARI GLINTON, BYLINE: (Reading) He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns and destroyed the lives of our people.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: (Reading) He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages and totally unworthy, the head of a civilized nation.
CORNISH: (Reading) He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, and to fall themselves by their hands.
ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: (Reading) He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.
JUANA SUMMERS, BYLINE: (Reading) A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people, nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.
SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: (Reading) We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: (Reading) They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must therefore acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind – enemies in war, in peace, friends.
COKIE ROBERTS, BYLINE: (Reading) We therefore, the representatives of the United States of America in general Congress assembled, appealing to the supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies solemnly publish and declare that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free independent states.
GREENE: (Reading) That they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved.
MONTAGNE: (Reading) And that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce and do all other acts and things which independent states may have right do.
INSKEEP: (Reading) And for the support of this declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GREENE: Two hundred and thirty-nine years ago tomorrow, church bells rang out over Philadelphia as the Continental Congress adopted Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GREENE: And we declare it’s MORNING EDITION from NPR News.