FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.22.14

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday will begin with areas of fog giving away to mild temperatures, with a high of forty-five. Sunrise is 6:56 AM and sunset 4:25 PM, for 9h 29m 31s of daytime. We’ve a new moon today.

On this day in 1963, Pres. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Here’s the initial account of the assassination, as reported in the New York Times:

Dallas, Nov. 22–President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot and killed by an assassin today.

He died of a wound in the brain caused by a rifle bullet that was fired at him as he was riding through downtown Dallas in a motorcade.

Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was riding in the third car behind Mr. Kennedy’s, was sworn in as the 36th President of the United States 99 minutes after Mr. Kennedy’s death.

Mr. Johnson is 55 years old; Mr. Kennedy was 46.

Shortly after the assassination, Lee H. Oswald, who once defected to the Soviet Union and who has been active in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, was arrested by the Dallas police. Tonight he was accused of the killing.

Oswald, 24 years old, was also accused of slaying a policeman who had approached him in the street. Oswald was subdued after a scuffle with a second policeman in a nearby theater.

President Kennedy was shot at 12:30 P.M., Central standard time (1:30 P.M., New York time). He was pronounced dead at 1 P.M. and Mr. Johnson was sworn in at 2:39 P.M.

Astrobiologists remain curious about the possibility of ocean life beneath the icy surface of the Jupiter’s moon Europa. Kevin Hand of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains:

Corporate Welfare, WEDC

WEDC’s Revolving Door to Take Current Leader Back to the Curb

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An enterprise of selfish, striving executives, advancing their white-collar ambitions and of those of their friends, looks as though it’s about to lose yet another leader:

Madison — The head of the state’s flagship jobs agency is expected to leave his post as the governor moves into a second term, a move that would generate additional turnover at an agency that has struggled with the problem.

Several Republican sources told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Reed Hall, chief executive officer of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., will be leaving the agency. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the governor has not yet announced any cabinet changes. They did not provide specific reasons for Hall’s departure or any names of potential replacements….

Since WEDC’s creation in July 2011 by Walker and lawmakers as a replacement to the state Department of Commerce, the quasi-public agency has struggled with turnover among its executives and rank-and-file employees. Over the past three years, WEDC has already had two CEOs, two COOs and four chief financial officers….

See, State jobs agency chief Reed Hall expected to leave post @ JSOnline. 

This agency is built on the corrupt principle that a few may and should take the earnings of ordinary people mostly to bolster the ambitions of well-fed, white-collar buddies, many of whom are accomplished only in exaggerating their accomplishments.

Only days ago, a WEDC executive, Lisa Johnson, was scheduled to speak in Whitewater.  Reed Hall came here several months ago to flack another round of crony-capitalist grants.

These were supposed to be great events in our local politics, but the only people who could possibly think so would be the ignorant, the deceptive, or the intoxicated. 

Nothing these WEDC leaders have said or even could say can overcome the plain truth of their agency’s exaggerations and incompetentcy. 

There’ll be yet another leader at the WEDC, to follow those who have gone before, but the wrong course will remain the wrong course, in any event. 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.21.14

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Our Friday in town will be mostly sunny with a high of thirty. Sunrise today is 6:55 AM and sunset 4:26 PM, for 9h 31m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 1.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1783, men fly over Paris:

French physician Jean-François Pilatre de Rozier and François Laurent, the marquis d’ Arlandes, make the first untethered hot-air balloon flight, flying 5.5 miles over Paris in about 25 minutes. Their cloth balloon was crafted by French papermaking brothers Jacques-Étienne and Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, inventors of the world’s first successful hot-air balloons.

On this day in 1941, Wisconsin begins ramping up military production:

1941 – Badger Army Ammunition Plant Established
On this date the Badger Army Ammunition Plant was established on 7,354 acres of land in Sauk County, near Baraboo. Employment reached an historic high of near 7,500 during World War II. The plant operated intermittently over a 33-year period to produce single and double-base propellant for cannon, rocket, and small arms ammunition. Plant operation was terminated in March 1975 and all production facilities and many support functions were placed on standby status, which continued until 1998. [Source: Joint Munitions Command]

Google-a-Day asks a question about Fantasy Football:

The basis of modern Fantasy Football was developed by Wilfred Winkenbach in 1962, laying the blueprint for a League that was known by what acronym?

Food, Holiday, Recipe

Two Thanksgiving Turkey Choices

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Chef Andrew Carmellini’s recipe for Thanksgiving, with bacon-wrapped turkey pieces:

For a different taste of Thanksgiving, turkey or pumpkin dumplings as served at Mimi Cheng’s Dumplings:

Wholly different choices, yet both are enticing. 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.20.14

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in town will be mostly sunny with a high of twenty-one. Sunrise is 6:54 AM and sunset 4:27 PM, for 9h 33m 17s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with just 4.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1864, General Sherman continues his March to the Sea through Georgia:

…nearly a week into the famous March to the Sea, the army of Union General William T. Sherman moves toward central Georgia, destroying property and routing small militia units it its path. Advanced units of the army skirmished with scattered Rebel forces at Clinton, Walnut Creek, East Macon, and Griswoldville, all in the vicinity of Macon.

The march began on November 15 and ended on December 21, 1864. Sherman led 62,000 troops for some 285 miles across Georgia and cut a path of destruction more than 50 miles wide. He divided his force into two columns and widened the swath of destruction. The Yankees cut away from their supply lines at Atlanta and generally lived off the land. What they did not consume, they destroyed. More than 13,000 cattle fell into Union hands, as well as 90,000 bales of cotton and numerous sawmills, foundries, cotton gins, and warehouses.

Sherman’s superiors, President Abraham Lincoln and General in Chief Ulysses S. Grant, endorsed his controversial tactic. Sherman planned, in his words, to “make Georgia howl,” and argued that, although it would be brutal, destroying the resources of the South could bring the war to a quicker end….

For an assessment that finds Sherman’s campaign more restrained and disciplined than critics have contended, see historian W. Todd Groce’s Rethinking Sherman’s March.

Google-a-Day asks a question about reptiles:

What reptile is the most vocal, with some species able to communicate more than 20 distinguishable messages through sound alone?

Corporate Welfare, Development, Government Spending, WEDC

Clap Your Hands, It’s Galactic Marmoset Week

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So one reads that a few of Whitewater’s town fathers, toadying to the WEDC’s public-relations machine, are crowing that the Innovation Center is part of GLOBAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP WEEK.

Global? That’s not so much. One can easily show these striving WEDC public-relations men how to take something small and make it look really big.

Behold, I give you —

Slide1

These gentlemen have been thinking too small. They ludicrously want to tie the Innovation Center to the rest of the planet, do they?

Well, that’s not so much – lots of people have said they’ve been across the globe, on ships or airplanes. Even centuries ago, after all, Columbus falsely claimed he’d been all the way around the world, when he truly went no farther than the Western hemisphere.

Yet no one — no one in all human history — has ever connected the pygmy marmoset, a four-ounce, six-inch mammalian primate, to a GALACTIC celebration.

Until now.

For all the grandiosity of global claims, there’s a lack of imagination to it. The real money’s in interstellar public relations.

There’s nothing wrong with being a marmoset, even a small one like the pygmy marmoset (Cebuella pygmaea). I’d say, actually, that the genuine creature is so astonishing that it needs no exaggerated representation.

cute-Pygmy-Marmoset9-1

For it all, here’s one true and irrefutable claim –

Whitewater’s a beautiful town without grandiose declarations, without laughable exaggerations. What we do well cannot be made better through puffery; what we’re doing poorly cannot be made right through soft-soap.

But if others think a mere word connotes success, that word is galactic, not global.

Corporate Welfare, Development, Government Spending, WEDC

Another Holiday on the Calendar

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Oh dearie me, having been thinking these months about Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, somehow GLOBAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP WEEK slipped my mind.

How, truly, could one forget a week-long celebration of white-collar tech startups?

Perhaps a lifetime of celebrating both religious and national holidays, and the actual accomplishments of ordinary people who have overcome harrowing obstacles, has left me ill-suited to join a bacchanalia for office-dwellers looking to make their living on the taxes of ordinary working people.

There are people who truly deserve government’s help and encouragement, people whose efforts are to be assisted and encouraged. They’ve hard lives and rough hands.

Only at the end of a long list of potential recipients for public assistance could one possibly expect to find the name of a white-collar software men.

But the crony-capitalist Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, never having passed up an opportunity to present a false claim in the place of actual accomplishment, is sending along one of its leaders to speak in town.

There is this advantage, though – if you’re an Innovation Center that’s so weak that it has had to make lesser payments in lieu of its actual taxes, and is filled with with a non-tech educational agency or perhaps third-tier tech firms drawn here with public grants & loan guarantees, it’s probably ego-salvaging to say you’re part of something GLOBAL.

What’s wrong with being a small brick and mortar merchant in Whitewater, without pretending the town is on the verge of becoming the next Silicon Valley, or part of the next GLOBAL happening?

It’s better – much better – to be a real American town than a fake tech hub.

And yet, and yet, much as one rightly laughs at these pretentious celebrations, at least one can show others how they should properly be done….

Next: Let’s Go Galactic.

Previously, at FREE WHITEWATER on the WEDC:

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.19.14

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Midweek in Whitewater will be cloudy, with a high of twenty-six, and an even chance of snow showers this morning. Sunrise is 06:52 AM and sunset 16:28 PM, for 9h 35m 13s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 9.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Tech Park Board meets this morning at 8 AM.

On this day in 1863, Pres. Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address.

Google-a-Day asks about a spacecraft:

If the names of NASA’s space shuttles are listed alphabetically, how many missions were flown by the fourth one on the list?

Charity, City, Good Ideas

The ‘Nearly Naked’ Run/Walk for Whitewater’s Community Clothes Closet

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NN FINAL Flyer

On Sunday, December 7th @ 11 AM, here’s a chance to join others in a very clever idea in support of a very good cause: Whitewater’s inaugural Nearly Naked 5K Run/Walk.

Participants in the 5K run/walk will bundle up in clothing they’d like to donate to Whitewater’s Community Clothes Closet, and remove those items at designated points along the course. At the end, having made their donations of clothing, they’ll finish the charity drive ‘Nearly Naked.’

I’ve embedded the flyer for the event, and more information is also available online at both www.nearlynaked5k.com/whitewaterwi and the run/walk’s Facebook page, Nearly Naked 5K-Whitewater, WI.

The charity run/walk is 12.7.14 @ 11 AM, with one-site registration at 10 AM, but there’s also an early bird registration period until November 22 that guarantees early registrants some fine promotional swag.